Busman's Holiday

"Monsieur Bonfils, I know you're the page image, but we need your help with a case in the examples."

"'Busman's holiday' is an expression which refers to when people do the same thing on vacation that they do in their everyday lives, such as plumbers who visit the Museum of Sinks, or villains who disguise themselves even on their days off."

— Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril

A Busman's Holiday is a vacation spent doing things similar to one's normal work. The phrase was first recorded in 1893 in the UK. The idea is that a busman, to go off on a vacation, would take an excursion by bus, thereby engaging in a similar activity to his ordinary work.

A detective, for example, goes on holiday. While they are on that holiday, a murder will take place in the vicinity and they will be forced to solve that case. If the killer knows the detective is there, they're either very stupid, very arrogant, or are plotting something big. Or something bigger than it looks.

This trope is much more likely than not to be lampshaded. Often, upon finishing the impromptu adventure, the hero insists on returning back to work immediately, stating they need a vacation from their ruined vacation.

In anime, Hot Springs Episodes and Beach Episodes often turn out to be busman's holidays, especially if the show in question happens to be an action show, in which case a villain or villains will show up to ruin the heroes' fun. If a character doesn't do the job as a calling, but finds trouble anyway, they're probably a Mystery Magnet.

The simplest explanation for this phenomenon is the belief that a regular vacation would be boring. If the main character is fairly low in their job's hierarchy (i.e. a beat cop), it can also nicely justify the utter lack of backup and why a rookie is handling an adventure that should properly go to someone way above their pay grade.

For any serial work, there's a lot of overlap between this and Vacation Episode. Compare Pulled from Your Day Off when the character gets called into their actual job from their vacation. See also Reassignment Backfire. For cases when the character has to perform their own job or duty to solve an ongoing problem occuring in the place where they originally planned to take a rest, see Tourism-Derailing Event.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In the Terry Tate - Office Linebacker commercials, Terry tackles people that are slacking on the job or not following company policy in one way or another to increase productivity. However, when he is forced to take a vacation because he never takes a day off, he is so dissatisfied with the service at the hotel that he applies his usual work methods at the office to the hotel during his vacation. It works, as even the manager of the hotel says that production has never been so high.
• Lampshaded in this commercial for The Weather Channel, when Jim Cantore, notable for showing up where big storms are going to happen, goes to the beach for a vacation, everyone starts running for the hills, with one shopper filling his cart with bread and making a run for it and a dog barking at him as if saying "please, go away".
• One Progressive commercial has the gang of sales reps at the beach, promising to not talk about insurance. Then two other beachgoers talk about their own insurance issues, and Flo cracks within seconds and rushes over to help.

Anime & Manga

• The monsters of the week normally only ever attacked the one specific Tokyo district where Sailor Moon and her friends lived (Azabu-Juuban, if you were wondering). However, whatever remote location they decided to go for vacation, the Class Trip, or a Beach Episode invariably either just happened to have one there too... or was the home of such oddities as baby pleiosaurs, or ghosts.
• Subverted in a Hot Springs Episode of Outlaw Star: Gene went to the hot springs planet specifically to find ammo for his Caster, not to hang out with scantily-clad ladies. His seriousness temporarily alarms his companions, but they end up shrugging it off. There's also an assassin after Gene, but a sequence of coincidences wind up preventing Gene from even realizing that the assassin is after him before any confrontations ever happen.
• Justified in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, because the protagonists themselves are the MacGuffin for the first season. Not so much justified in the second season.
• The Kindaichi Case Files. The titular hero is always running off on some sort of situation in a far off, isolated place. Many times, it's people requesting his help. Many times, he's just trying to make money for his beloved mother. Inevitably, people start dropping dead. And the phone lines are cut.
• Case Closed:
  • This trope is used to death in the series. It features multiple cases, often multi-episode, in which Ran, Conan, and Detective Mouri go on vacation, often to some sort of secluded manor or other such vacation home, and usually they stay with several other people. One or more of them is almost always killed and the manor is almost always cut off from the rest of the world for at least a night, and Conan has to figure out what's going on. Ran's usually targeted in these cases, too, for some reason. It is often lampshaded by police chief Megure.
  • This is occasionally (but rarely) justified when Mouri is invited because he is a detective, and someone suspects something will happen. Ironically, in later adventures, his fame as a detective often gets him invited places where crimes are to happen by people who have absolutely no foreknowledge or suspicions that these crimes are going to take place.
• The third story arc of FAKE, and the OVA based on it, takes place during Ryo and Dee's English vacation, during which they almost immediately discover a dead body. They actually do their best to try to subvert the trope — when Berkeley Rose, playing it straight, asks them to help him investigate, Ryo refuses and tells him that police work is Not a Game — but ultimately they're not given much choice in the matter.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Most of the heroes' day-offs end up like this. There's the airport fire the Aces helped put out during their vacation four years before Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, the Forwards' one-day break in StrikerS which turned into a mission when they discovered a certain Mysterious Waif, the entire Marriage incident that occurred in StrikerS Sound Stage X around the same time Subaru arranged a reunion with the other Riot Force Six members, and even in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, Enforcer Teana found herself needing to help with a police report regarding Hegemon Ingvalt during her time off. Though, as the "Holiday Trip" arc of ViVid (in which the cast gets together for a chance to do some training) shows, the girls (and Erio) themselves wouldn't have it any other way.
  • Averted in Sound Stage M4, in which the Yagami family's day off goes without incident.
• Episode 5 of 009-1 does this when 009-1 is on vacation in Rome and gets mixed up in a case being handled by another agent.
• In episode 4 of Marginal #4 Kiss Kara Tsukuru Big Bang, idols Shy and Kira finally get a day off, and they decide to visit the main idol group at their school festival. Of course, they end up performing at Atom's class's cafe, and then later, for Rui's class's play.
• In a One Piece filler arc, the crew stops at a resort that even welcomes pirates, but end up fighting the Foxy Pirates and thwart the owner's scheme to find a hidden treasure that two sisters are looking for.
• Kiddy Grade episode "Day/Off" — which turns out to be anything but.
• In ×××HOLiC Watanuki cannot have peace. Ever. He's a Cosmic Plaything being forced to Work Off the Debt of his time-displaced clone, and every Side Quest he gets sent on builds the relationships he needs to assure his own existence.
• Every single breather episode in Bleach will end with a fight against a Hollow, regardless of how much sense it makes in context. The only exceptions are the breathers that follow the Zanpakuto arc, where they fought against a Sword Beast in every episode.
• In Tiger & Bunny, Kotetsu finally makes use of his vacation days to visit his daughter in the tenth episode. He gets as far as the bridge out of Sternbild before it blows up right in front of him, heralding the start of a citywide terrorist attack.
• Ace Attorney:
  • In the manga, during Phoenix and Maya's visit to Sparkle Land, a murder takes place and it falls on Phoenix to defend the accused using what he's observed. Hilarity Ensues when Phoenix meets the cast of the Sparklestar show, and they begin speculating who called a lawyer and why.
  • Turnabout Prophecy has this happen not only for Phoenix, but also for Franziska, who filled in at the "thong" fortune-tellings because one of her father's friends asked her, and ends up as prosecutor for the trial of Russi Clover.
  • In the Ace Attorney Investigations manga, this happens less often, since Edgeworth and/or Gumshoe are often at the scene on business, but there are some exceptions, such as when the lead singer of Bird Wing is killed while Edgeworth and Gumshoe are attending the band's last concert, or when Edgeworth and Gumshoe go to a clinic with colds, and a patient ends up dead.
• Subverted in Monster. Inspector Lunge, who is Married to the Job, is forced into mandatory vacation due to obsessing over a particular case. While visiting a peaceful west-German village and taking some time off, he is approached by local police to help them on a case, and turns them down. Then Double Subverted as the town he went to just so happens to be ground zero for a final confrontation between Johan and Tenma.
• Cardcaptor Sakura:
  • Averted: When Sakura goes off on holiday she has an entire episode without any new cards.
  • Played straight once, too, when a class trip to a beach reveals a new card in a nearby cave.
• Rosario + Vampire: Two summer holidays and a heat wave break from Yokai Academy result in this.
  • In Tsukune's freshman year, the News Club is doing investigative reporting in the human world over the summer break, looking for some stories that you could probably find for any human newspaper. They find a pair of witches. (Slightly justified: witches are 'beings of the borderline' between humans and monsters, so they're more or less abundant in both realms).
  • In his sophomore year, a heat wave prompts them to visit Mizore's home. The News Club wants a vacay. Tsurara wants her daughter and Tsukune to make little snow fairies. An organization known as Fairy Tale wants Kahlua Shuzen to go batshit crazy on the snowgirl population if Miyabi Fujisaki doesn't get Mizore as a bargaining chip.
  • Then, when summer break comes, they go for a proper vacation. Cue yakuza. Cue a former Yokai Academy student. Cue Kanade Kamiya, representative of the seventh branch office of an organization known as Fairy Tale, and a siren who wants to turn a city full of humans into a mountain of corpses. Cue sing-off.
• In Girls und Panzer, this is played with when Maho returns home in the prequel manga, Little Army. Miho had expected her to be gone for the entire summer break because of the tankery tournament she was in, and was overjoyed when she heard Maho was given time off to compensate for the loss of her break. However, Maho ends up getting into a tankery match with Miho in order to help Miho reconcile with a friend who hated Maho, and help the friend learn more about her. Maho also ends up helping out at her mother's tankery school in her break.
• Happens every time in the Pretty Cure franchise. The main characters are always attacked by the villains.
• The Seven Deadly Sins: The titular sins are a group of seven powerful knights serving the kingdom of Liones. Before they were framed at the start of the series, Meliodas would usually manipulate the team into taking trips together to places like the beach or mountains on their days off. During their play at the beach, they disturbed a kraken that was hurting a local village, and in the mountains destroyed a swarm of dangerous monster bugs plaguing the forest. No one, save Merlin, seems to have noticed this manipulation.
• Symphogear: Occurs during episode 7 of Season 3 (GX). The "training" session at the beach is really an excuse for the girls to relax, at least until Garie shows up.
• In Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee, Lag gets a day off from his job as a Letter Bee(i.e. postman) in Episode 31/Chapter 21, but Sylvette, his housemate and a dollmaker, has a delivery to make. She ends up making the delivery herself, with Lag as her "dingo" (bodyguard and partner).
• In the early Yu-Gi-Oh! manga when the series followed a Monster of the Week format, most chapters involved Yugi's Superpowered Evil Side challenging villains to games and then punishing them after they lost. Once in a while though, the characters would run into some random game-obsessed Muggle, like a Mad Bomber at an amusement park or a Bruce Lee Clone at the arcade, who challenged the heroes to a deadly game instead.

Comic Books

• Atomic Robo: Jenkins gets attacked by a beach full of mooks when he is forced to go on vacation. And that's only part of it. His week off is entirely spent in destroying a crime syndicate. However, this is Jenkins we're talking about; a week fighting drug lords is relaxing to him.
• The Avengers: In the Savage Avengers one-shot for Empyre, Venom and Conan the Barbarian just want to enjoy the sights in Mexico when the Cotati invasion reaches them. The one-shot ends with them getting back to their vacation.
• Played for Laughs in a tie-in to Avengers Assemble. After ordering all the Avengers to take a vacation, Tony finds that Steve and Natasha are fighting Hydra (different cells at that), Thor and Hulk are battling Wendigo, Ant-Man and Falcon are experimenting with their gear and Hawkeye… was the only one who actually went on vacation
• Birds of Prey: Black Canary goes on a vacation in issue #50 and is promptly abducted into her next case. The name of the issue? "Busman's Holiday", of course.
• Darkwing Duck: There is a Darkwing Duck cartoon in Disney Adventures with this very name. He keeps getting in Latin Darkwing's way. At the end, the he takes a Busman's Holiday in Darkwing's city.
• The DCU: In the Three of a Kind crossover story arc, The Flash, Green Lantern, and Green Arrow once attempted to take a relaxing cruise together. The cruise ship just happens to be secretly transporting a comatose supervillain and a gang of other supervillains on a recovery mission. Hilarity Ensues.
• Demon Knights: The characters became a team because they all just happened to be taking a busman's holiday in the same tiny village, which just happened to be set upon by the Questing Queen.
• Empowered: In her spare time, Ninjette likes to play videogames, where the hero is... a ninja.
• Green Lantern (1941): Doiby Dickles, a cab driver, is ordered by his doctor to take some time off for his shoulder and arm to heal and while on vacation accidentally buys a cab due to the language barrier.
• Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi: An unpublished story for DC Comics, "Working Holiday", has the girls unable to enjoy their day off at Dizzyland Amusement Park because of hysterical fans who want their autographs and to pose for photos.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: Used to humorous effect in a Beach Episode issue; a thief grows increasingly nervous about the endless stream of Legionnaires showing up, convinced they're there to bust him. In fact most of them are only there to goof off, and even the two who are investigating his thefts aren't making much progress and have no idea he's involved; everyone is rather baffled when he finally panics and confesses all.
• Robin (1993): Tim takes a weekend off from crimefighting to go to the beach with his classmates. Their hotel is then attacked by a swarm of ninjas who kidnap one of said classmates.
• Runaways: The Runaways got sucked into the middle of Secret Invasion (2008) while trying to take a day off to let their newest member Klara get acclimated to the 21st century.
• S.H.I.E.L.D.: S.H.I.E.L.D. agents have learned to prepare for any vacation to turn into a mission. See Survival Tips for S.H.I.E.L.D. Recruits under "Web Original".
• Static: Lightly parodied in one issue, in which Virgil and his friends want to go see a movie. At the same time, the fearsome super-powered gangbangers of the Blood Syndicate want to see the same movie, at the same theater. The stage is set for a huge clash... that never actually happens. Everybody watches the movie, Static claps, the Syndicate members walk out, and that's the end of the story.
• Superman:
  • Clark Kent and Lois Lane's relaxing honeymoon away from the rigors of investigative reporting (which in the DCU, especially in Metropolis, means "escaping from Apokolips-backed gangsters and uncovering Lexcorp-financed Supervillain Lairs") predictably turns into a kidnapping-cum-terrorist attack by a foreign conspiracy ring.
  • Way back in Superman #76, Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne take a cruise (and end up assigned as roommates because the ship is overbooked). Naturally, a crime is committed and The World's Finest Team is born.
• Tintin: The titular character can't go anywhere, ever, for any reason without something happening.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): All three times Diana and Etta try to take a vacation they end up fighting bad guys, once one of Paula's agents who snuck aboard their plane, then a group of cattle rustlers, and finally then some alien invaders.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): Steve Trevor, at a point where he'd retired from the Air Force and was acting as a commercial pilot, was asked to fly the plane he was taking on vacation when the flight crew carried out a Suicide Pact while the thing was on auto pilot.
• X-Men:
  • Cyclops is told by Professor X to take a holiday, and he does. Over the span of a four issue miniseries, he has to fight off two supervillains, a paramilitary unit and a tentacled monster. Not quite a straight example, since he was only told to take time off from leading a team and he mostly succeeded.
  • Played straight in The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, as Jean Grey and Cyclops attempt a honeymoon, but end up being taken into the future to raise their son for ten years.
  • Of course the rest of the team themselves can hardly take a real break. In one of their earliest time offs they end up being abducted by Sentinels who bring them to outer space and they have to fight their way back to Earth. They then take the chance to enjoy a vacation in Banshee's home, where their enemies the Juggernaut and Black Tom are waiting for them. Then there's this time when the ladies spend the day shopping and end up rescuing Jubilee, who hangs out in that particular mall, while the men go out drinking and push off a full-scale alien invasion. There's also this time when they choose to relax in the Savage Land, they find the place destroyed, and take it to themselves to restore the whole place. Then there's this time where they get ambushed by ninjas, etc. etc...

Fan Works

• In Avenger Goddess, Diana wonders why she always ends up finding a disaster on holidays when a trip to Disneyland with Natalia in 1992 reveals that the park's current Santa is part of a terrorist group attempting to provoke a new war.
• In the Lyrical Nanoha/Slayers AU crossover Blood That Flows, Lina's return home was supposed to be just for reuniting with her old friends and family as well as introducing her new ones. However the Mazoku got wind of her return, and she just couldn't leave that be, knowing that trouble could easily follow her back to Earth.
• In the Naruto AU fic First Try: Team 7, Kakashi's rationale for going on a C-Rank is for the group to relax and ease up on their constant fighting. You can guess what happens.
• In Juxtapose, Izuku and co. are about to head to a yakiniku party to celebrate a long week of hard work and training. The League of Villains decides to invade all of Musutafu at that same moment.
• Downplayed in Kimberly T's Gargoyles series; while the Manhattan Clan encounter a few problems while on vacation in New Orleans, in general they are able to focus on their original purpose of finding mates for Brooklyn, Lexington and Hudson (as well as Broadway finding a new mate and Angela acknowledging who she really wants).
• Leave for Mendeleiev:
  • Aurore takes Marinette to the ice rink so that she can unwind after having a harrowing experience while helping Nino with his movie project. Unfortunately, they happen to visit at the same time Mayor Andre is there harassing the owner. Neither girl is particularly surprised when this leads to another akuma, though Aurore is particularly ticked off and goes off on both Frozen and Hawkmoth.
  • Marinette and her friends aren't the only ones interested in seeing the new panther exhibit; Master Fu also visits, bringing several of the kwami along. This enables a couple of Big Damn Heroes moments once Animan attacks.
• In A.A. Pessimal's Discworld/The Big Bang Theory crossover fic The Many Worlds Interpretation, Ponder Stibbons, accompanied by an Assassin, visit California and end up on a working holiday. Assassin Johanna ends up bodyguarding the Caltech crew against some of the usual perils and hazards. Ponder, meanwhile, ends up teaching Physics at Caltech. He finds it to be a place full of seething academic rivalry, inflated egos, and very eccentric academics. She finds Los Angeles to be a place with a pervading bad smell which is full of thieves, overworked cynical cops, and assorted mortal perils. It's just like home for both of them.
• Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse): Hammer has to explain what "busman's holiday" is to the Japanese-speaking cast when they discuss what character classes they're playing in a fantasy MMORPG, and they're all revealed to have selected something close to what they do in real life. For example, Kazuya, who is a demon summoner, plays the monster tamer class.
• The One to Make It Stay: Master Fu gives Marinette the Horse Miraculous so she has a way of getting back to Paris in case Hawkmoth attacks while she's at Summer Sesh with Kitty Section. Naturally, an akuma strikes at Summer Sesh instead, signaling that Hawkmoth is in the area, since his powers have a limited range.
• In The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists fanfic An Adventure with Napoleon, the pirates have anchored their boat and are simply enjoying the nice weather when Napoleon finds them. Lampshaded at the end, when they sail off to find a "proper holiday."
• The Prayer Warriors take a break from killing everyone who disagrees with them, particularly "evil gods", to observe St. Patrick's Day, but end up fighting a demon called St. George, winning easily and helping the IRA gain independence for Ireland, before returning to London to save Ginny from Harry Potter.
• The Private Diary of Elizabeth Quatermain: They may not be called on to Save the World at any given point, but it seems the League can't go anywhere without stumbling on some local mishap that has to be set right.
• The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Alex's vacations typically end up encountering superpowered crime that requires Terawatt's help. Visiting Comic-Con? A Master of Illusion tries to rob an armoured car. Going to Paris after graduation? A bio-weapon is released. By the time of the Davenport cleanup, she's learned to expect it, and brings her Terawatt bag just in case.
• Sort of a Running Gag in The Stepbrother Sitch series; Kim and Ron can't seem to go on vacation anywhere without running into their foes and teaming up with other Disney characters to stop them.
• In the Lyrical Nanoha/DC Animated Universe crossover Takamachi Nanoha of 2814, Superman laments that this happens to him whenever he takes a vacation somewhere other than Smallville. Batman refuses to believe that the 'vacation curse' is real, while taking a vacation in Japan and making it an example on purpose. Of course Batman just planned on beating up petty criminals; to someone who deals with the likes of The Joker that's a vacation. Of course, he then ends up involved in the Holy Grail War, proving that You Can't Fight Fate.
  • In one omake, Harry Dresden tries to ask for time off from his employer Luvia. She tries to decline by pointing out that in addition to the 'vacation curse', since he's a detective he's probably going to end up having to investigate a murder, and most likely a Closed Circle Locked Room Mystery. Harry decides to take his chances, only to end up involved in a convoluted mystery at the mountain resort he vacationed to. He does initially think to avert this by bringing friends, only to realize that everyone he knows has reason to kill one another. He decides to never go on vacation again.
• In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers/TaleSpin fanfic Too Huge To Be True, the Rangers visit Cape Suzette — where they get involved in a cargo job, and later, a treasure hunt with Higher for Hire.
• In the Spider-Man fanfic Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With the Light, Mary Jane's trip to Fire Island is interrupted by Polestar, much to her displeasure. Briefly lampshaded when she's glad she listened to her nagging intuition and brought her costume with her to the beach, despite her initially not wanting to.
• In White Devil of the Moon, Nanoha and Fate return home while Nanoha is recuperating from her injuries brought on by her being a workaholic (and, as it turns out, for Kyouya and Shinobu's wedding), but end up catching the attention of Luna, who recognizes Nanoha as the reincarnation of Princess Serenity. A few fights ensue as the result of Luna refusing to explain herself because she assumes Fate is evil. Fate is initially reluctant to tell Nanoha, knowing that Nanoha will get involved despite her condition, but Fate is ultimately forced to tell her, not long before a Dark Kingdom attempt on Nanoha's life ends the vacation and sets the plot into motion.
• Ships Ahoy!:
  • Defied by the agents of the Copenhagen Odd Squad precinct, who bar Oprah from getting another job because a vacation to a place like Europe is meant to be for relaxing, not working. When Oprah tells the Director of the precinct what her intentions are for traveling to Europe, he simply brushes it off by saying that there's no competition between her fruit stand and Odd Squad.
  • The agents of the Munich Odd Squad precinct also prevent Oprah from working while traveling. She responds by deciding to shelve books at a local bookstore for free.
• My Dream Is Yours: Oona's preferred vacations are ones where she can do the same things that she does at work. If she's unable to, then it's not a good vacation for her.
• Vow of Nudity: In one story, Haara goes on vacation to the hot springs, gets abducted, and quickly finds herself fighting monsters and dealing with the Genasi like she always does.

Films — Animation

• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls:
  • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree, the class attends summer camp and the heroes are eager to take a break from their school's magical shenanigans. Unfortunately, they run into Gaia Everfree, a nature-controlling Humanoid Abomination.
    Fluttershy: Oh, why do these kinds of things always happen to us?
  • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rollercoaster of Friendship, the girls are looking forward to having fun at an amusement park, only to discover someone is using magic to make people disappear.
  • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Spring Breakdown, everyone goes on a cruise for spring break, but then the girls discover magic from Equestria is running amok.
  • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Sunset's Backstage Pass, the girls go to a concert, but then Sunset Shimmer has to deal with a "Groundhog Day" Loop caused by someone's misused magic.
• Discussed in Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright — the gang has been on so many normal trips-turned-mysteries to solve that Fred's convinced himself that this happens to other people all the time as well, because it's way too big of a coincidence otherwise.

Films — Live-Action

• True Stories. Deconstructed by Earl Culver in his speech about VariCorp.
  They don't work for money anymore, but to earn a place in heaven, which was a big motivating factor once upon a time, believe you me. They are working and inventing because they like it! Economics has become a spiritual thing. I must admit it frightens me a little bit. They don't seem to see the difference between working and not working. It's all become a part of one's life. Linda! Larry! There's no concept of weekends anymore!
• In What About Bob?, Richard Dreyfuss' psychiatrist character, Dr. Leo Marvin, goes on vacation to get away from his neurotic, clingy patient Bob Wiley. Bob follows him, and his continued antics lead to the following exchange:
  Dr. Catherine Tomsky: Relax, Leo.
  Dr. Leo Marvin: I'M RELAXED!
  Dr. Catherine Tomsky: Take a vacation.
  Dr. Leo Marvin: I'M ON VACATION!
• Die Hard and Die Hard 2 both occur while McClane is out of New York, trying to reconcile with his wife, and at Christmas even. It's not until the third movie that he finally gets to have an adventure in NYC. Even the third film takes place while McClane is supposed to be suspended, so he isn't supposed to be involved in crimefighting then either.
• Speed 2: Cruise Control: After surviving the events of the previous film, Annie goes on a cruise vacation with her new boyfriend. It naturally ends up being hijacked by a madman.
  Annie: I swear, I'm never leaving the house again.
• In Transporter 2, the French detective from the first film takes a vacation to America just when the Transporter gets mixed up in another caper. The detective spends his vacation sleuthing around the local police department.
• Played with in The Net, in which Sandra Bullock's character Angela is working on debugging a computer program using her laptop, while on vacation at the beach, not because she is forced to, but rather because that's the way she is. It is lampshaded by the male lead, also a computer programmer, who first meets Angela during this incident.
• Rush Hour 2 has Carter and Lee on vacation in Hong Kong following their exploits in the last film. Turns out Lee is secretly on assignment to investigate a bombing of a U.S. Embassy and it doesn't take long before the two are swapping blows with the Chinese mafia.
• Cliff Richard plays a literal example in the musical Summer Holiday.
• In Murder at the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes finally gives in to Watson's urging that he needs to takes a holiday, and accepts and invitation from Sir Henry Baskerville to visit him in Exeter. No sooner does he arrive than he is confronted with a case involving a double murder and a stolen racehorse.
• In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: Holmes begrudgingly allows Watson and Mary to go on their honeymoon. Almost immediately after their train leaves, the two are beset by Moriarty's thugs, with Sherlock coming along to protect them. Watson angrily assumes that Holmes deliberately led them there, but Holmes correctly points out that the thugs are specifically there to kill Watson and Mary. This pretty much obligates Watson to help Holmes complete his investigation while Mary stays under the protection of Sherlock's brother Mycroft. It's even moreso this trope when you remember that Watson was dissolving his professional partnership with Holmes in order to be a proper husband to Mary, and was trying to do so in the first movie as well, with Holmes deliberately setting things up so that Watson would be compelled to join him on the investigation. This is less a Busmans Holiday and more a Busman's Retirement.
• The Gourmet Detective A Healthy Place To Die opens with Detective Maggie Price ordered to take a vacation, and convinced to accompany Henry Ross- the titular "Gourmet Detective", a famous food critic- to a major convention at a spa, during which she ends up helping to investigate the murder of a journalist.
• All of The Thin Man movies are technically examples of this trope; Nick Charles was a detective before marrying the wealthy Nora and retiring, but he keeps getting dragged into solving murder mysteries.
• In Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter Parker's class goes on a trip to Europe, and he's looking forward to taking a break from being Spider-Man (even though Aunt May packs his Spider-Man suit into his luggage anyway). He's not pleased when Nick Fury shows up to rope him into a mission.
• Climax: The troupe of dancers relax and celebrate their final rehearsal before a big dance tour through America by holding a dance party that takes up the majority of the film.
• In Thunderball, Bond is sent to a health spa to get back in shape by his superiors. He just happens to run across Count Lippe, an enemy agent who tries to kill him. It's all part of a plot that he will later be officially assigned to investigate, but at this point it's simply a coincidence.
• In The Accountant (2016) Christian Wolff is a forensic accountant who works for various international crime organizations (The Cartel, The Mafia, The Mafiya, etc). This is a dangerous line of work and he is trained to use lethal force to protect himself. After a big assignment, he is advised to lay low for a while and take on some non-criminal clients. He accepts a contract from a highly respected prosthetics company which is trying to go public and needs a clean audit by an outside accountant. Everyone expects him to uncover some sloppy bookkeeping and maybe mild embezzlement. Instead he uncovers a huge fraud and soon has highly trained mercenaries trying to gun him and his new protege down.
• The Room (2003): Peter the psychologist. He is always playing psychologist to his friends (though the dialog jumps from actually being their psychologist, to just a friend being roped into giving them advice).
• In The Crime Doctor's Courage, Dr. Ordway is supposed to be on vacation in California when he is approached by old acquaintance Kathleen Carson to get his opinion regarding her new husband Gordon. Ordway attends a dinner party that evening during which Gordon is murdered, and Ordway is immediately catapulted into solving the murder.
• In Doctor at Large, Dr. Sparrow accidentally reveals his profession to a waiter during his stay at the Judges Arms, leading the waiter and the eavesdropping Major Porter to try and get him to examine them.

Jokes

• An eminent medic was talking to an eminent lawyer at a social gathering when they were interrupted by someone who wanted to describe his symptoms to the medic, and essentially get some free medical advice. The medic dealt with him, and then turned back to the lawyer and said, "This happens to doctors like me all the time, being pestered at social functions for free diagnoses. I don't know what to do to stop it." The lawyer smiled, and said, "It's not difficult. Just send them a bill." A couple of days later, the medic received a bill from the lawyer.

Literature

• Agatha Christie played with this several times.
  • Hercule Poirot had this happen to him several times, most notably in Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Murder in Mesopotamia and Appointment with Death and Evil Under the Sun. Captain Hastings name-drops the trope in Dumb Witness, another Poirot novel. Lampshaded in The Hollow, where Poirot mistakes the murder scene for a prank, and is not amused. In "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding", the murder scene is a prank, laid on in Poirot's honor by some youngsters holidaying in the same spot — or is it?
  • Miss Marple took one in A Caribbean Mystery as well as in At Bertram's Hotel. Lampshaded in Nemesis, in which Miss Marple considers that her tendency to stumble into crimes is similar to an "accident prone" friend of hers who has been in four taxi accidents.
  • At least half the stories about professional problem-solver Parker Pyne involve him trying to take a holiday only to wind up having to solve the problems of his fellow-travelers. Six of these, originally serialized in Pall Mall Magazine under the banner of "The Arabian Nights of Parker Pyne", take place in the course of a single holiday — Parker Pyne gets quite tetchy about it toward the end of the sequence, and in the final story his desire to avoid getting dragged into any more mysteries is central to the plot.
• In The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries series by Ngaio Marsh, the Busman's holiday is somewhat of a Running Gag: Alleyn's vacations are usually cut short by yet another dead body or he ends up solving a crime on his vacations; in Spinsters In Jeopardy, it comes down to a working holiday, complete with his wife and son in tow. The whole problem is even lampshaded by Alleyn in the very first novel, A Man Lay Dead, where he mentions not playing the "Murder" (Clue) party game, not being overly fond of a Busman's holiday.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: Lampshade Hanging — and defined, in trademark Snicket style — in The Penultimate Peril, in which Sir, the lumbermill boss, has come to a hotel to do some business at a cocktail party and attends a sauna so he can enjoy the smell of hot wood.
• Older Than Television: In a couple of the Sherlock Holmes stories (The Adventure of the Reigate Puzzle and The Devil's Foot), Holmes has worked himself almost to the point of a nervous breakdown, prompting Watson to drag him off on a vacation. Of course they immediately run into a mystery that needs solving — much to Holmes' delight, and Watson's annoyance.
• In Dorothy L. Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon, super-sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey goes on his honeymoon with his detective novelist wife, only to run slap bang into a locked room murder mystery. Also in lampshading the trope, Busman's Honeymoon is pretty much the trope namer, but the trope also occurs in The Nine Tailors (murder following Peter on vacation) and Have His Carcase (murder following Harriet, Peter's future wife, while she is on vacation).
• The equivalent expression in Diane Duane's Young Wizards books is "Wizard's Holiday", which became the title of the seventh book, where there is a double example of this. Nita and Kit go on vacation to distant planet, where of course there is a crisis (the locals accidentally managed to stall their growth as a species.) Sker'et, Filif, and Roshaun, who are staying with Nita's family to learn about Earth's culture, end up having to help Dairine fix the sun.
• Discworld:
  • A couple of novels have hung a lampshade on the idea that wherever Commander Vimes goes, usually on diplomatic missions as Duke of Ankh, he can't help looking for crimes. And he usually finds them. Vetinari, naturally is fully aware of this, so keeps sending him.
    • It's implied that in Snuff at least, Vetinari purposely had Sybil Vimes force Commander Vimes to take a holiday, knowing full well what wheels would be set in motion.
    • In Raising Steam Vimes has become savvy enough to this trope that the next time Sybil suggests a vacation he says he might as well stay at work because of it. She just thinks it'll keep him entertained.
  • This trope is lampshaded in The Truth, in which William and Sacharissa eventually become so used to being reporters that, when they try to slip away for an afternoon, a traffic accident immediately causes both to revert to journalist mode. William suspected the ever-hungry printing press would derail their desire for a quiet break from work — not even a vacation, just a half-day — and (given Discworld's high narrative-causality quotient) he was right.
  • In Making Money, Mr. Bent is such a banker at heart that his vacation consisted of taking a tour of the banks of Uberwald. He even stayed in touch with the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork via clacks.
• In the Finnegan Zwake novels, Finn's mystery-writer uncle is followed wherever he goes — Latin Land, Qurac, the Land Down Under — by real murders.
• The Baby-Sitters Club:
  • God forbid they could take one vacation without babysitting, not matter how contrived. The sole exception was Stacey's Lie. Oh, and even if they went on vacation without Mallory's five-billion younger siblings or Kristy's step-siblings, then there would be some parents who for some stupid reason needed a sitter for the exact amount of time they'd be there.
  • And in the mysteries sub-series, not without running into a mystery.
  • They even assume that they will be taking one wherever they go, such as when Dawn goes to visit her dad in California and remarks that she may babysit for some of her old clients while she's there. You know, because their parents wouldn't have found new sitters since she left the state, and would be so thoughtless as to intrude on her two weeks with her non-custodial parent by asking her to work.
• Similarly, every time Nancy Drew went anywhere on vacation, a mystery inevitably arose.
• Same goes for The Hardy Boys. Each franchise has over 500 stories, and a normal vacation isn't amongst them.
• In Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma novels, Fidelma, a Dark Ages defence lawyer, seems to keep finding murders when she's off-duty, whether she's attending the fair at a neighbouring kingdom or on pilgrimage to Rome.
• Biggles complains of this when his squadron finds itself being shuttled around the world in one of his World War 2 adventures.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Played with, in Summer Knight Billy asks Harry (a real-life professional wizard) to participate in their D&D session. Harry declines, saying it "sounds too much like work." He eventually accepts, on the condition that he plays a barbarian with 'mighty thews.' I demand thews!
  • In the short story "Day Off", after securing a rare entire day to himself and planning to spend it with his girlfriend, Harry instead spends most of it dealing with the same kind of havoc he usually has on his plate, although of an unusually trivial variety, such as his werewolf friends getting supernatural fleas (for the record, it's of the "unusually trivial variety" because the story was written for a story anthology called "Blood Lite," in which an author challenged some of her sci-fi/horror writer friends to take a shot at comedy.)
• Referred to by name in the Jonathan Kellerman novel Bones.
• Played with in the In Death series. Roarke even uses the exact term when suggesting to Eve this might happen. One of Roarke's relatives does find a dead body, but the case is quickly solved by local PD, leaving no investigation needed by Eve.
• This turns out to have been invoked in Hush Now, Don't You Cry, the 11th Molly Murphy book. Molly and her police captain husband are invited to an important man's summer house for their honeymoon and their host is murdered. They eventually find out that he had discovered his brother's criminal past and wanted a police officer there when he told everybody.
• In the Loveday Brooke story The Ghost of Fountain Lane, Loveday tries to take a holiday in Brighton. When a local police inspector calls to ask for her help with a difficult case, he finds she's already invoked this trope by investigating, purely for her own satisfaction, a ghost story that appeared in the local newspaper.
• In The Shadow novel "The Golden Vulture," Detective Joe Cardona has one of these inflicted upon him as he's offered the opportunity to take a vacation to Miami on Commissioner Weston's dime... all for the low, low price of acting as a security guard for Weston's friend, who's being menaced by the titular villain.
• In A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs by Ellis Peters, Detective Inspector Felse is on holiday with his family when a murder is committed that the local police aren't equipped to deal with. Not only that, but he's right there when the body is discovered — which turns out to be a key to figuring out who did it, when he realizes that somebody wanted a police officer to be present at the discovery.
• On the rare occasions when Nero Wolfe leaves his house — whether it's to give a lecture as the guest of honor at a meeting of the world's greatest chefs, or to attend a horticultural exhibition involving orchids (in downtown New York City, or the wilds of upstate New York) — he invariably runs across a murder that needs to be solved.
• The Cat Who... Series: Qwilleran is a well-known crime journalist who keeps trying to branch out into other topics. He's never successful, even when he's just trying to take a vacation.
• Jaine Austen Mysteries: Jaine gets work as the teacher of a memoir writing class on a cruise ship in Killer Cruise. She gets thrown into people's drama, is blackmailed into editing a crewman's manuscript, and of course, has to solve a murder.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • "Remote Island Syndrome" deals with a murder mystery on an island, and Itsuki comments at the beginning of the story how mysteries seem to follow detectives everywhere. Then, it turns out that it was all fake, set up by Itsuki's Organization to keep Haruhi entertained. There was also the Twist Ending where we are reminded that Haruhi is not as much a Mystery Magnet as the cause of them thanks to her Reality Warper powers: because of the fact that she had been expecting one, there might now be an actual mystery criminal on the island.
  • Then later zigzagged in the "Snowy Mountain Syndrome" and "Where Did The Cat Go?" stories later. The SOS Brigade goes to one of Tsuruya's family winter retreats so that Haruhi can hunt down another closed-circle mystery. Due to her knowledge that Itsuki had set up the "Remote Island Syndrome" mystery with his "relatives", Haruhi ordered him to set up another one for the winter retreat. Everything seems to follow plans, until the Brigade goes out skiing, then getting lost in an abrupt snowstorm and stumbling on a mysterious mansion in the middle of the blizzard, which is actually a distorted data space created by a different entity than Yuki's Data Overmind. Cue the usual "Brigade solving the issue while keeping the masquerade intact for Haruhi" antics, complete with a shaky-but-acceptable-to-Haruhi cover story; the Brigade, specifically Itsuki, insists to Haruhi that it was a group hypnosis. Then back to the Tsuruya retreat, where the intended plot unfolds. Despite the prior planning Itsuki even hunts down a cat that looks similar to Shamisen in order for his plot to unfold, Haruhi manages to break down the headscratcher puzzle fairly quickly, and without much fanfare. In the end, the main event had very little supernatural and story depth. Itsuki even admits this to Kyon, citing that he prefers to be a side character rather than the mastermind, much to his chagrin when Haruhi insists that he also plan another plot for the next SOS Brigade summer retreat.
• In Full Metal Panic!, even if the characters go to a beach or some other spot to relax, Sōsuke still manages to find a robot that needs piloting, a team of ridiculous villains who need an ass-kicking, or some other situation that requires his special skills. Alternately, he makes one by accident. Once he didn't even do it on purpose — he invited Kaname for a vacation and terrorists just so happened to attack in the middle of it.
• In Rune Soldier Louie the adventurers take some time off to go to the lakeside villa of a friend and end up fighting the "Guardian of the Lake".
• In A Certain Magical Index, Touma wins a trip to Italy, so he takes Index. He and Index run into a plot by the Roman Catholic Church to sail a fleet of ships to bomb Academy City. Stopping plots by the Roman Catholic Church is what he has been doing the whole season. Hilariously, he kind of expected this: with his abysmal luck, there's no way he would ever win a vacation trip without some strings attached.
• In Heavy Object ace fighter pilot Mariydi is ordered by her superior to take a vacation at a luxury resort. She's bored out of her mind until she ends up in a firefight with the protagonists and ultimately goes hand-to-hand with an Elite. Afterwards she notes the vacation was to her taste.
• In Mr Jelly's Business, detective Bony is on holiday in Western Australia, on the far side of the country from his native Queensland, when he runs into a friend and colleague who's just hit a dead end on a murder investigation. Bony is delighted to have his holiday interrupted by an interesting mystery, and goes out of his way to get himself invited onto the case.

Live-Action TV

• Many Medical Dramas will have physicians who are off-duty/outside work help out in medical emergencies, especially if there are no other medical professionals present. Scrubs, Royal Pains, and Grey's Anatomy provide examples of this. ER subverts it when Mark goes to California to visit his ill mother. Inevitably, a mass trauma comes into the hospital where she is — but he can't do anything as he's not licensed in the state. He settles for talking one of the interns through a procedure.
• A British Game Show of the same name was broadcast in the late '80s/early '90s. The contestants were in teams based on their profession, and the prize was a trip to an exotic country... to work.
• James Herriot spent his real-life honeymoon tuberculin-testing cattle. The incident made it into both the book and TV series All Creatures Great And Small.
• Angel:
  • "Heartthrob" opened with the title character going to Tibet. First we see the other characters back home discussing it and Gunn saying that Angel should have just "gotten drunk and gone to Vegas," only to be told that that's stupid. Then there is a delayed Ironic Echo Cut to the Tibetan monastery, where Angel is in an intense fight; someone walks in and is stunned by the carnage, to which Angel responds, "Demon monks. I should've gone to Vegas."
  • In "The House Always Wins", they actually do all go to Vegas for a bit of a vacation and to visit Lorne. Of course, it ends up that Lorne has been held hostage for some time and is being forced to read destinies, so they have to rescue him. It is duly lampshaded:
    Fred: And now?
    Gunn: Now we do that fighting-for-our-lives thing that we do.
• On Baywatch, anytime the lifeguards went on vacation, some situation inevitably arose that required them using their lifesaving skills.
• On The Big Bang Theory, when Sheldon's boss forces him to take a vacation, he first tries to sneak back into work. When that fails, he decides to spend the week working with Amy in her lab.
• Black Books: This is Bernard's goal on holiday. He only agrees to go on vacation when deafening, round-the-clock construction work next door makes staying at home intolerable.
  Bernard: We're going somewhere where I can read, sit, and have a quiet drink.
  Manny: So your ideal holiday would in fact be... here?
  Bernard: Correct. So find somewhere exactly like this.
• Bones:
  • In the episode "The Passenger in the Oven", Booth and Brennan are travelling by plane, not for a criminal investigation for once but for an archaeological find in China. Until the stewardess find a corpse in the plane, naturally.
  • Invoked in the episode "The Nazi on the Honeymoon", where workaholic Brennan insists on helping the local authorities solve a murder while in Buenos Aires for her honeymoon with Booth, who is reluctant until learning that the character in her books that she based on him is a popular hero in Argentina. It turns out to be for the best, as the local forensic anthropologist that had been assigned to the case ended up being the murderer.
• Bramwell: When the titular character flees to the country to visit old friends following her break-up with her fiancé, she gets caught up in treating a measles epidemic, which snaps her out of her depression and makes her rediscover her passion for medicine.
• Castle:
  • An episode invokes this when Castle goes to spend a relaxing weekend in the Hamptons (more specifically, with Beckett, who is now his girlfriend) but a murder victim stumbles into his backyard and dies in his pool, wrecking the Two-Person Pool Party that was about to go down. He mentions that it feels like he is Jessica Fletcher in an episode of Murder, She Wrote. The episode was even titled "Murder He Wrote".
  • This happens again on Castle's and Beckett's honeymoon (in fact, they choose their honeymoon vacation based on their need to go undercover) and again when Castle is simply trying to fly to Europe with his daughter.
• Charlie's Angels:
  • In "Angels on a String," the Angels go to a resort, planning to play tennis, but instead get caught up in a plot to kidnap an anti-communist writer and replace him with a lookalike.
  • In "Angels on Vacation," the Angels and Bosley go to a small town in Arizona where Kris's uncle works as a sheriff. When they arrive, they learn that Kris's uncle and most of the women in town have been taken hostage as part of a plot to bust a criminal out of prison.
• Columbo: In common with many detective series of the period once their creators get bored with the standard milieu. Wherever Columbo goes to relax, somebody else will die. "Troubled Waters" and "A Matter of Honor" are examples.
• In the Covert Affairs episode "Half a World Away", Auggie goes on vacation to Istanbul, having volunteered to help with the sound setup for a major jazz festival. His setup picks up a voice he recognizes as the terrorist who blinded him, and his vacation turns into an unofficial op.
• Criminal Minds:
  • "The Fisher King, Part 1" had a murder where Morgan and Elle were on vacation, with Elle even being arrested and falsely accused of the crime. It turns out to be a setup by the Unsub to suck them into the case.
  • "The Pact" has Rossi spend his last vacation days of the year searching for the episode's Unsubs. One gets away. In this case, at least, Rossi had been complaining about being forced to take the vacation since he goes crazy with nothing to do, so getting to use his vacation days for the search was his form of Loophole Abuse, and once his part is wrapped up, he bemoans that now he's stuck finishing the vacation.
• In Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa, Arisugawa's stay at an inn (supposedly to research for his novel, but he's clearly treating it like a vacation) is cut short when a body is found in one of the guest rooms, with Arisugawa being one of the potential suspects.
• CSI:
  • "Appendicitement" has lab tech Henry get ambushed by Nick, Greg, and Hodges on his birthday/day off, as the three insist on taking him to the best barbecue joint in Nevada. When they get there, it's closed down due to a hep B outbreak (thanks to the former owner being served up on the grill), and there's a dead man with a raccoon welded to his face.
  • "Girls Gone Wild" sees Sara, Morgan, and Finley decide to take advantage of a joint weekend off for a spa trip, only for their car to break down in a small town, which kicks off a series of events that leads to them uncovering a band of rapists among the populace.
  • "Girls Gone Wilder" follows up with the women going to a forensics conference at a resort, only to run headlong into a mass shooting.
• A minor example with Mac from CSI: NY. In "Greater Good," he chooses to spend his day off reinvestigating a closed case that had been bugging him. To his credit, though, he does keep checking in with Lindsay, who's in the hospital anticipating the birth of her and Danny's first child. In the end, he uncovers the real culprit... and becomes a godfather!
• Doctor Who: A large portion of episodes involve the Doctor and their companion(s) showing up somewhere to relax or see the sights and stumbling upon another adventure. If they go somewhere and no adventure results, there's no episode about it.
  • As a result of the TARDIS's tendency to materialize at the wrong point in space and/or time, several Doctor Who stories include a variation on this trope where the Doctor and their companions fail to even reach their intended holiday destination:
    • In "Time-Flight", the Fifth Doctor tries to take Tegan and Nyssa to the Great Exhibition of 1851 to help them get over the recent death of Adric. Instead, they end up at Heathrow Airport in Tegan's time and, from there, discover that Concordes have been vanishing in mid-flight. Ironically, Five had spent the previous several stories trying to get Tegan back to Heathrow Airport in her own time; only once he stops trying does he actually manage it. And then after the TARDIS leaves her there, she realizes she didn't want to go home yet after all.
    • In "Tooth and Claw", the Tenth Doctor tries to take Rose to an Ian Dury concert in 1979. They end up in Scotland in 1879, where they must protect Queen Victoria from a werewolf.
    • In "The Hungry Earth", the Doctor seems to have promised his companions Rio and ends up in a small Welsh village with, of course, a mystery that demands solving... You'd think he'd be smarter by now.
  • "The Dominators": The Second Doctor takes Jamie and Zoe to the peaceful planet Dulkis for "a nice holiday", only for the three of them to become caught up in the Dominators' attempts to exploit the planet for their own ends.
  • In "City of Death" and "The Leisure Hive", the Doctor and Romana go on holiday only to, well, have to save planets/people, of course. At the end of the second story, the Doctor mentions wanting a holiday from his holiday. (It could be argued that the Doctor is almost always on vacation, but these are instances where it's explicitly mentioned as his primary goal.)
    The Doctor: Anyway, there's been enough randomising on this job.
    Romana: Job? It was meant to be a holiday.
    The Doctor: Well then, I'm going to be very glad to get back to work.
  • The Fifth Doctor spends a bit of time trying to get to the Eye of Orion, the most peaceful place in the universe. When he finally gets there, he gets roped into the events of "The Five Doctors".
  • "Boom Town": The Doctor, Rose and Jack need to spend some time in Cardiff to let the TARDIS refuel at the Rift, and are planning on having a breather in a perfectly safe city ... only for the Doctor to discover that a presumed-dead enemy has become the mayor.
  • "New Earth": Ten visits a New Earth hospital with Rose after a call from on old friend on his deathbed, only to end up having Rose's mind taken over by a presumed-dead enemy and the hospital hiding a dark secret.
  • "Midnight": The Doctor and Donna go to a spa/holiday planet for some relaxation, and the Doctor takes a tour bus out to see a diamond waterfall while Donna soaks in hot tubs. Donna manages to get a vacation more or less, but the Doctor's tour bus is attacked by an unseen entity and the Doctor is nearly killed. Permanently.
  • "The Next Doctor": The Tenth Doctor lands in Victorian London to see the sights... then another Doctor appears to apprehend a Cybershade and the plot begins.
  • In "The End of Time", the Doctor explains to Ood Sigma that he went on a vacation and married Queen Elizabeth I. In "The Day of the Doctor", we learn that said marriage involved trying to stop a Zygon invasion and saving Gallifrey, but he doesn't remember doing so.
  • "The Time of Angels": Eleven and Amy's trip to a museum is cut short by the discovery of a homing black box with temporal co-ordinates sent 12,000 years earlier by an old friend. The same friend later (earlier from her point of view) also defaces one of the first cliffs in existence to call the Doctor.
  • "The Vampires of Venice": The Doctor takes Amy and Rory to the romantic destination of their choice as a wedding gift — presumably anticipating more ice-cream and gondola rides than vampires.
  • Eleven's first Christmas episode is ostensibly set during a honeymoon. So, why is the cruise ship crashing?
  • Amy and Rory in particular can't seem to get a break. In "The Power of Three", the Doctor takes them to the Savoy in 1890 so that they can celebrate their anniversary. Surprise, surprise, there's a Zygon ship underneath the hotel... Ends up being Played for Laughs, at least.
  • "Orphan 55": The Thirteenth Doctor and her companions go to Tranquillity Spa for a break... only for the place to come under attack from hostile creatures. As it turns out, the spa is hiding some deadly secrets.
• In the Due South episode "Burning Down the House" Fraser spends his vacation up north on an epic pursuit of a man for littering.
• On Emergency!, this happened to both the paramedics and the doctors.
  • On one occasion, Dr. Brackett takes a frazzled Dixie out to lunch at a very posh restaurant. Their lunch is interrupted by a woman who is pregnant and in labor.
  • Returning from a fishing trip, Johnny, Roy, and Chet come across a car accident on a lonely highway and stop to help the survivors.
  • Another episode consists entirely of just Roy and Johnny going on a fishing trip. They have to rescue one guy, help treat another and even propose an emergency response medical service for that sparsely populated rural county. They never do get to do any fishing.
  • In "The Stewardess", the fire department sends Roy and Johnny to Sacramento, with their essential equipment, to do a demonstration. On the return flight, a fellow passenger has a heart attack and they have to dig their equipment out of the cargo hold so they can help him.
• Technically not the same, but... in Engine Sentai Go-onger, the rangers are all unemployed, but their former jobs mimic the vehicle basis of their Engine partners/mecha (Go-on Red, for example, was a former racecar driver whose Engine partner is a condor/racecar hybrid, Go-on Black is a former policeman whose Engine partner is a German Shepherd/police car hybrid, etc.). Also, their primary headquarters is a large mobile home, which the rangers have to drive themselves.
• Extraordinary Attorney Woo: Gwang-ho is excited when his autistic daughter Young-woo brings him dinner, something she's never done before. He's deflated when he sees that she's brought him gimbap which, as the owner of a gimbap restaurant, is what he sees all day.
• Fawlty Towers: In "The Psychiatrist", Basil is terrified that the psychiatrist Dr. Abbott who is a hotel guest is analysing everything he does, even though Sybil tries to reassure him that Dr. Abbott is there on holiday. At the very end of the episode, when Basil is hopping about in agony with his jacket pulled over his head, Mrs. Abbott looks to her husband for professional advice, who replies "I'm on holiday".
• Grantchester S5 opens with a Vacation Episode in which all the main characters go off to a holiday camp for a week. Inevitably there's a murder, and although policeman Geordie insists he's not getting involved, it's not long before he's pulled rank on the junior officer assigned to the case and taken over.
• Grimm:
  • When Nick goes on vacation for a few days to propose to Juliet, he gets a break from his police work though ends up helping out a woman in an abusive relationship when it turns out the couple are wesen (supernatural creatures).
  • Also the episode where they go to a bed and breakfast for Monroe and Rosalee's honeymoon. In this case, it's a coincidence that the situation occurs, but it only happens because of a Continuity Nod related to Nick being a Grimm.
• In the Here Come the Brides episode "Mr. & Mrs. J. Bolt," the Bolt brothers take a break from their work as lumberjacks in a cabin in the woods. Jason keeps Joshua and Jeremy so busy with wood-cutting and repairs that they feel like they're still at the logging camp.
• In the Homicide: Life on the Street episode "The Last of the Watermen", Kay decides to call in an impromptu sick leave to escape Baltimore's grisly murders. She returns to her family in Chesapeake Bay, only to end up in the middle of another homicide investigation.
• This happens to House quite a bit.
  • In the Season 2 episode "Deception", House is at an OTB parlor when the woman he's chatting with has a seizure. Without telling anyone he's a physician, he tells bystanders to have her sent to his hospital after noticing an interesting rash on her abdomen.
  • In the Season 3 episode "Airborne", Cuddy and House are flying back from a medical conference (which may therefore not count as a vacation) in Singapore when one of the passengers falls ill.
  • In Season 4's "You Don't Want To Know", Cole and Kutner are at a magic show in Atlantic City when the magician passes out in the middle of the Chinese Water Torture trick.
  • It happens to both House and Thirteen in Season 5: in "Lucky Thirteen", the eponymous character has a one night stand with a woman who starts seizing shortly after they finish.
  • "Locked In" has House injured in a traffic accident out-of-town only to wind up in the hospital next to a man with a rare form of severe paralysis.
  • In the two-part Season 4 finale, it's given a much more Amateur Sleuth slant, as Amber's use of a certain flu medication would not have been a medical problem if House's presence hadn't caused her to be in a bus accident that damaged her kidneys.
• Whenever Inspector Lynley takes a holiday, it's a fair bet that it won't be much of a holiday. He even manages to nose his way in on an investigation when he's suspended! This man takes Married to the Job to a whole new level. And of course, where he goes, so goes his faithful partner DS Barbara Havers.
• Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis once went on a holiday to Italy and Morse investigated the death of a British citizen in an apparent accident that he was convinced was murder. It turns out he could have just enjoyed his holiday, as it really was an accident, but ended up exposing a tangentially related conspiracy and arresting an actual murderer for his troubles.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Downplayed since it wasn't a vacation. When Olivia is pulled out of SVU for an undercover assignment for the FBI, while embedded with a suspected group of eco-terrorists, she still ends up investigating a sex crime.
• Leverage:
  • The episode "The Juror #6 Job" features the team sending Parker to jury duty so she'll have a chance to interact with people normally. Of course, there ends up being a big corporation trying to buy the trial.
  • In "The Girls' Night Out Job" and its counterpart "The Boys' Night Out Job", each half of the team independently finds itself drawn into a completely unrelated job during their days off.
• An episode of The Librarians has the Librarians-in-Training take a day off from magic artifact hunting. Naturally, they end up doing what they always do. Then again, when Baird returns to the Annex at the start of the episode, she finds all three there anyway (well, Ezekiel shows up a minute later with police sirens blaring in the background).
• When Lightman of Lie to Me goes on a vacation in season 2, not only does he get pulled into a case while there but he spends the whole time spying on his team by webcam. Well, except for Ria, who he calls down to help him.
• In the Madam Secretary episode "Standoff", Henry and Liz head to New York for the weekend for their anniversary. Unfortunately Henry's work for the NSA catches up with them: the subject of his investigation makes contact at a restaurant trying to get help.
• Invoked in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel season 2. Midge goes to the Catskills with her family for their annual summer vacation at Steiner Mountain Resort, right as the comedy circuit is heating up. She's also in need of stand-up comedy gigs to bolster her profile, so Susie follows her up to Steiner, and using her connections at the Stage Deli, arranges for Midge to do several gigs at the local Borscht Belt resorts.
• Matlock seems to run into murders on a regular basis, independent of his practice of law.
  • Virtually any time Matlock goes on vacation. Matlock goes to his home town to attend a family reunion? Matlock ends up defending an accused murderer in court. Matlock goes on vacation at an Oceanside resort? Matlock ends up defending an accused murderer in court. This happens twice.
  • Another time, Matlock attends a wedding. He witnesses a murder from his hotel room. Because of his obvious conflict-of-interest, Leanne represents the accused murderer.
• In the Miami Vice episode "The Afternoon Plane", Tubbs and his girlfriend Alicia win an all-expenses-paid trip to an island retreat. It turns out to be a trick by his enemy Orlando Calderone to lure him out of Miami.
• Midsomer Murders: Every single time Barnaby's wife drags him to some local shindig, save-the-historical-building foundation, or hobby meeting, it turns out to be a cesspit of petty rivalries, thievery, blackmail, adultery and other questionable activities that ends in murder. Apparently Barnaby's own honeymoon was spent searching for a poisoner.
• Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries: Every time Miss Fisher goes on vacation, she winds up solving a murder.
  • Lampshaded in a conversation between Jack and Hugh:
  Jack: Who was that?
  Hugh: Miss Fisher, sir. She's on holiday.
  Jack: Anyone dead yet?
  Hugh: Just one so far, sir.
• In the Mission: Impossible episode "Kidnap", Jim and Barney are on vacation, and Jim is planning a tennis game like it's a mission, talking about the opponent's weaknesses and how to go after him. Then Jim gets kidnapped by a Syndicate boss and Barney has to call in the rest of the team to help him pull off a caper to acquire the ransom — an incriminating letter stored in a safety deposit box at the local bank.
• Monk:
  • In the episode "Mr. Monk Goes on Vacation", Monk's assistant Sharona takes him on a vacation against his will, where he is incredibly uncomfortable and simply sits on the beach fully clothed. When a murder mystery pops up he couldn't be happier, and drags Sharona into helping him solve it. Upon their return Sharona asks that they never go on vacation again, then says "I can't believe I just said that!"
  • Lampshaded in "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever":
    Natalie Teeger: Everywhere you go, every time you turn around, somebody is killing somebody else.
    Captain Stottlemeyer: That's true.
    Adrian Monk: What?
    Captain Stottlemeyer: There was the time you went on vacation, and then on the airplane...
    Adrian Monk: These things happen!
    Captain Stottlemeyer: And that stage play...
    Adrian Monk: It happens!
    Natalie Teeger: To you!

Natalie even concludes at the end of the episode that fate makes Monk go to these places just so he will be there to solve the murders.

• Noticeably, the coincidental nature of the trope is played straight-on in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Rock Concert", in which Monk and Natalie just happen to be by the port-a-potties when maintenance employees find a body in one of them.
• Played straight in "Mr. Monk Makes the Playoffs" when Monk and Stottlemeyer go to a playoff game with tickets for the press box with Bob Costas (As Himself), but Monk discovers an attempted murder and a murdered quarterback Hidden in Plain Sight by being dressed as a passed-out fan.
• The tie-in novel series obviously takes it further, with several taking Monk out of San Francisco. But regardless of where he goes, Hawaii, Germany, Paris, a road trip through the Southwestern United States, murder follows him everywhere he goes to the point that Natalie gets annoyed about it.

• Murder, She Wrote: Any time Jessica Fletcher leaves Cabot Cove, she immediately gets involved with a case. Technically, crime solving's not her "real" job, but it might as well be as far as the series goes. It is eventually lampshaded by an Amoral Attorney in one episode, by using the by-then-well-known fact Jessica runs into murders a lot to try to create a Chewbacca Defense that undermines her credibility as a witness for the prosecution, painting her and her family as a bunch of homicidal maniacs.
• Murdoch Mysteries: Detective William Murdoch and his wife Julia apparently cannot have their honeymoon in New York without unveiling a conspiracy ("Murdoch Takes Manhattan") or go camping in the countryside without stumbling onto a murdered corpse right next to their tent ("Brakenreid Boudoir") or at the inn they were staying ("Murder Checks In").
• Odd Squad:
  • In "Failure to Lunch", Olympia and Otis take their lunch break together and go to The Confalones restaurant to have lunch, but end up having to solve odd problems. The whole thing about going out to eat together was so they wouldn't solve oddness and so that Olympia could prove that she isn't as much of a Workaholic as Otis thinks she is.
  • Oprah's idea of "taking it easy", as seen in "Odd Squad in the Shadows", is her taking a vacation in the Great Plains of Odd — known to be one of the oddest places in the world — and fighting off oddness rather than relaxing. What's more, she's still in uniform!
  • Subverted in "The Weight of the World Depends on Orla". Jellybean Joe decides to enact an Evil Plan to fill the Mobile Unit van with jellybeans on the Mobile Unit's day off using a machine dubbed the Jellybean Blaster, and they are forced to figure out which large jellybean goes on top of it in order to shut it off before it floods the van. By the end of the episode, they decide to willingly let the machine go off, and they're shown in a swath of jellybeans going up past their necks as they proceed to happily chow down.
• The Partridge Family: In "Not with My Sister, You Don't," Reuben decides to go on a two-week vacation to get away from "the phony glamour and tinsel, the wheeler dealers, the promoters who are only interested in money." He picks Las Vegas as his destination.
• And also to Perry Mason. Interestingly, it also happened once to D.A. Hamilton Burger, who called Perry into the matter because he suspected that his friend would be the defendant. Though in the latter case, the actual trial took place in the standard city courtroom as opposed to a podunk meeting hall where Perry often had to defend when he was on vacation.
• More like Busman's Convalescence for Inspector (DI) Lampion in the episode "La Plume Empoisonnée" (adapted from The Moving Finger) in Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. Lampion is sent to recover from a serious gunshot wound in a nice, quiet little village. Turns out someone has been sending letters accusing the village's notables of all sorts of horrible things for weeks before he arrives, and a murder is committed a couple of days after.
• In Pie in the Sky, the protagonist Henry Crabbe is a semi-retired detective who just wants to get on with running his restaurant but keeps getting dragged back on duty by his old boss, Assistant Chief Constable Fisher. "Once a Copper" and "Passion Fruit Fool" both start with Fisher leaving town for the week, and Crabbe looking forward to an opportunity to concentrate on the restaurant, only for a mystery to find him out anyway. "In the Smoke" has Crabbe go away on a holiday from both his jobs, only to run into a Beleaguered Childhood Friend.
• In Poirot, Hercule Poirot canNOT go on vacation without somebody needing him to solve a crime, usually murder.
  • Miss Lemon mentions it by name in "Evil Under the Sun".
• The Professionals:
  • In "Close Quarters", CI5 is on a manhunt for a German terrorist group, but Bodie has been ordered to take a week off until his gun hand heals. While boating with his Girl of the Week, he happens to recognise the terrorist leader hiding out an a river island and takes him into custody. Unfortunately his fellow terrorists see him being taken away and pursue before Bodie has a chance to call in backup.
  • "Weekend in the Country" has criminals on the run after a failed Armed Blag deciding to hide in the country house where Bodie and Doyle, plus their girlfriends, are staying. Our heroes are unarmed (despite Bodie carrying handgun, radio and handcuffs in "Close Quarters") but it still turns out to be Mugging the Monster.
    Cowley: Your weekend turned into a bit of a busman's holiday.
• In Pushing Daisies Ned's visits to a magic show, a cooking contest, and a swimming show all end up with mysteries to be solved. One wonders if death isn't following him around in a way other than the obvious.
• Hammy British detective series Rosemary & Thyme also suffered from this trope. While its leads are primarily gardeners, they moonlight as detectives. Whenever they're off somewhere fixing a garden- sometimes abroad, however much this stretches belief- someone pegs it, and it ALWAYS has something to do with their primary calling. It verges on the ridiculous at times, but never had something ridiculous in a verge.
• Happens unintentionally to JD in the Scrubs episode "My Way Home". On his day off, he's paged by an intern to answer a (rather easy and pointless) question. He spends the rest of the episode trying to leave the hospital and get home, but keeps getting caught and interrupted. In one of the audio commentaries, it was stated that during the production of one of the first season episodes, Bill Lawrence managed to trick Zach Braff into running around the studio for about half an hour on an evening Zach was really eager to leave and go to a party. Perhaps this was inspiration for the aforementioned episode?
• None of the major characters in The Sentinel can go on vacation without ending up being chased by armed goons.
• A large segment of the Sherlock episode "The Sign of Three" is spent at John Watson's wedding, where Sherlock Holmes is his best man. The wedding is uneventful, with Sherlock's best man speech consisting of his recollection of his various adventures with John. However as he talks through two of his most intriguing (and unsolved) experiences with John he realizes something in his story didn't add up and that someone knew something they shouldn't have, the only place they might have learned it being from John's wedding invitation. He puts together that someone was trying to glean information about the wedding in order to target a guest who would otherwise be inaccessible due to his reclusive lifestyle, only coming out of his home in order to see John get married. Suddenly his wedding speech turns into a stall for time as he frantically tries to work out who the culprit and potential victim are, full of a bunch of random tangents to keep all the guests sitting so no one can escape his proximity. Even on his big day, John and Sherlock can't get away from mystery and murder.
• In the Smallville episode "Escape" Clark and Lois go to a Bed & Breakfast to relax as do Oliver and Chloe. It turns out that they all chose the one hotel that just happens to have a legend about a woman who felt so betrayed that she made a deal with the underworld and was allowed to walk among the living again to kill any man who crosses her path. And wouldn't you know it, All Myths Are True.
• Starsky & Hutch has "Satan's Witches", in which a quiet fishing trip in the woods is interrupted by virgin-sacrificing Satanists.
• Star Trek: The Original Series:
  • In the episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" we see Scotty spend his time off reading technical journals. When Kirk asks if he never relaxes, he replies "I am relaxing!" And when Scotty is later involved in a bar brawl and thus temporarily confined to quarters, he thanks Kirk for giving him time to read even more technical journals.
  • It also happens in "Wolf in the Fold", again with Scotty, whom Kirk was trying to give some time off at a pleasure planet after an accident in engineering. Scotty ends up accused of murder and the episode is devoted to finding the real killer and clearing Scotty's name.
  • And then there was "Shore Leave", where the crew transports down to a nice green planet for some R&R. Said planet turns out to be a place that makes its guests' thoughts reality. Any thoughts, blindly assuming that the thoughts would always be of pleasant things. However, at the end of the episode... it turns out the planet takes care to ensure no-one is permanently injured, and any apparent cases, up to and including seeming death, are fixed up. When the credits roll, the Enterprise crew is still on shore leave on the planet, and with the mystery already solved and out of the way.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • In the aptly-named episode "Captain's Holiday", Picard accidentally ends up spending his vacation trying to stop the evil aliens' master plan to conquer the universe — which is his day job.
  • In "The Game", Wesley returns to the Enterprise for vacation from Starfleet Academy, however he still helps out with tech stuff on the ship, including having to thwart an alien plot with the help of Ensign Robin Lefler.
• In the episode "Hollywood Babylon" of Supernatural, Dean Winchester wants to take a vacation in L.A., but they end up working a case. The boys' "sacred, annual pilgrimage" to Vegas also ends up as a case in season 7.
• The second season of Twin Peaks turns into a long-term example for Agent Cooper: After the writers answered the question of Laura Palmer's murder despite their original plans, they were left with no real reason for an FBI agent to be staying in a random town. The solution was to have Cooper suspended from the FBI, and following up his fondness for Twin Peaks by vacationing there in the meantime — much of which he spends acting as a deputy of the local police department.
• In the Victorious episode "Locked Up!", the main characters have to sing at the hotel they're staying at on their vacation to Yerba. Justified, as this was part of the arrangement for their all expense paid vacation.
• The X-Files:
  • "Never Again" counts as something of an inversion. Mulder is forced to use his accrued vacation time or lose it, so Scully is left to investigate an X-File she couldn't care less about. Where Mulder has a perfectly normal trip to Graceland, Scully uses the case as an excuse to get a little wild, but her fling turns out to have a tattoo he thinks is telling him to commit murder.
  • "Detour" has the two going to a team-building seminar for work. When an X-file shows up they are thrilled to have an excuse to ditch the seminar.
  • Scully in the "Christmas Carol"/"Emily" two-parter; she hasn't even unpacked for her Christmas vacation with family before becoming dragged into an investigation tied to her own abduction.
  • Scully again in the episode "Chinga", when she tries to have a weekend to herself in Maine only to run into a Creepy Doll.

Music

• The tune "Bugler's Holiday" by Leroy Anderson. What does a bugler do on holiday? He plays trumpet fanfares.

Video Games

• In Arknights, a couple of the sidestory events happened when the Doctor took vacation leave and traveled to various places like Siesta. It's like the world of Terra keeps dragging him into Catastrophes and political skullduggery when all he wanted was to have a break.
• In 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds, Lucy just wants to take a break from baiting vampires. Going to a McDonald's late at night to relax and have a treat, she runs into a vampire that's planning on draining the adorable cashier. You can kill him using one of sixteen methods.
• The Darkside Detective: Several chapters begin with the protagonist stumbling into supernatural goings-on while on holiday or his day off.
• In the western version of the story of Tails Adventure, the title character was taking one of these after his previous adventure, only to be woken up by a bomb going off in the forest.
• Super Mario Bros.: This happens to Mario and his friends so often that it's a wonder why they even try to take vacations.
  • Super Mario Bros. 2 starts off with the heroes falling asleep while on a nice outing, only for them to enter the dream world of Subcon, which has been taken over by Wart. The heroes must defeat him to wake up.
  • Super Mario World: According to the manual, Mario and friends travel to Dinosaur Land for a break after the events of Super Mario Bros. 3. However, when the Princess goes missing, the Bros. embark on another adventure.
  • Super Mario 64: Mario thinks he's just at Peach's castle for some cake, at least until some Lakitu with a camera talks to him as if he knows he's going on an adventure. Turns out Bowser took it over and sealed everyone inside paintings.
  • Super Mario Sunshine has Mario and Princess Peach take a vacation on Delfino Island, only for Mario to get framed for messing up the place and tasked with cleaning it up as part of his sentence, and Peach to get kidnapped again.
  • In Paper Mario 64, Mario's invited to attend a party at Peach's castle. Bowser attacks, effortlessly beats Mario, and takes over the castle, forcing Mario to find the Star Sprites and make his way back.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door starts with Mario simply heading to Rogueport to join Peach in searching for treasure. He runs into Lord Crump the second his ship arrives, and it just gets worse from there as Peach gets kidnapped by the X-nauts, leading Mario on a chase to find the seven Crystal Stars before the X-nauts use them to find the treasure, which Sir Grodus wants so he can Take Over the World.
  • Exaggerated in Super Princess Peach. Peach goes out for a stroll, just long enough for Bowser's minions to enter her castle and wreak havoc with the Vibe Scepter and capture Mario and Luigi, and several Toads. Now Peach has to travel to Vibe Island to save them.
  • In Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2, Bowser attacks the star festival with battleships and kidnaps Peach to make her his prize when he conquers the universe.
  • New Super Mario Bros. Wii starts with the heroes at Princess Peach's birthday party. Cue attack by the Koopalings and Bowser Jr.
  • Mario & Luigi: Dream Team has Peach, the Bros., and many Toads being invited to vacation on Pi'illo Island, and everything actually goes without a hitch aside from Luigi having a foreshadowing nightmare. It's not until they come across a stone pillow deep within Pi'illo Castle and accidentally use it to open the Dream World and free Antasma that things actually turn dangerous. Bowser himself wasn't even involved this time around until he heard that another villain had kidnapped Peach, but he teams up with Antasma soon enough.
  • Luigi's Mansion 3 sees Luigi win an invitation to a luxury hotel to which he also brings along Mario, Peach and her Toad attendants. Unsurprisingly, the hotel is haunted and is a trap set up by the hotel owner Hellen Gravelly and King Boo. Everyone is captured except for Luigi who must once again don a new Poltergust and capture ghosts that he's extremely terrified by.
  • Super Mario Bros. Wonder has Mario and all of his friends visiting Prince Florian in the Flower Kingdom for some fun, Until Bowser shows up and steals the Wonder Flower, fusing him with Prince Florian's Castle. Now the good guys have to gather the Royal Seeds to stop Bowser's latest plot and return peace to the Flower Kingdom.
  • Princess Peach: Showtime! has Peach going out for a night at the theatre only for Grape and the Sour Bunch to show up take over the theater, leaving it up to Peach to rescue the performers trapped in their own plays.
• A bit of a Running Gag in Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core is that every time Zack attempts to take a vacation at Costa del Sol, he ends up having to save the town from some sort of monster attack and thus completely ruins his vacation. At least these missions allow for Fanservice...
• The entire plot of Virtual Boy Wario Land. Wario lands his plane in the Awazon Rainforest for a vacation, sees Mask Guys heading behind a waterfall with a huge amount of treasure... gets dropped into a trapdoor and falls into a sort of Lost World beneath the jungle, getting treasure and fighting a genie along the way.
• Mass Effect:
  • A Commander Shepard with the War Hero background was on shore leave on Elysium when the Skyllian Blitz hit. Being a crack spec-ops soldier, Shepard only did what came naturally...
  • In Mass Effect 3, Professor Mordin states that first thing he wishes to do upon retiring is go to a beach and play with the seashells. Shepard jokes that he wouldn't last five minutes. Mordin agrees and says that he'd run tests on the seashells. He doesn't get to do that, but finds far more contentment in dying to do whats right.
  • "Citadel", the last piece of story DLC for 3. Admiral Hackett puts Shepard's team on mandatory shore leave to cool off, with Anderson offering up his old apartment on the Citadel. No sooner has Shepard sat down in a nice restaurant than they're engulfed in a conspiracy personally targeting them. Thankfully, they get some actual downtime once the mission's over.
• In the Doctor Who adventure game TARDIS, Amy lampshades that a lot of the Doctor's holidays always go wrong. The Doctor is upset by this, trying to prove Amy wrong by heading to 23rd century London, only to lead into the cliffhanger for the next game, involving alien sharks and flesh-eating shadows.
• In an example of the original definition, the Final Boss of Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View, Eiki Shiki, Yamaxanadu, is a judge of the Dead who spends her working hours deciding whether to send a given soul to hell. She is stated to spend her free time going around and lecturing sinners (so that she doesn't have to send them to hell).
• In Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!, Spyro and Sparx decide to go on vacation to the theme park Dragon Shores... only to get picked up by the Professor and Elora, who need him to save the world for him. Although they do occasionally remember that he's technically on vacation and throw him a bone, mostly, he doesn't get to relax like he wants to until the very end.
• All of the Outrealm missions in Fire Emblem: Awakening have Chrom and company somehow getting dragged into a battle, even when it makes no sense. Blatant examples include the Scramble Pack missions, in which they're doing things like visiting a beach or a hot spring, and the Golden Gaffe mission, where everyone has to battle some Risen to get their money back.
• Trauma Center: New Blood has Episode 5-1, "Face-Off". The protagonists are attending a hockey game when one player is hit so hard that part of his stick rams through his arm, severing the ligaments. Needless to say, they're the doctors in the house.
• LifeSigns: Surgical Unit has the main setting of Episodes Three and Four on a small island with a clinic instead of inside the big city hospital where the rest of the game takes place with the justification that Tendo is on vacation with his sister Hikaru. A few mishaps and incidents occur that end up getting Tendo's attention and eating into his vacation time during the episodes.
• The Nancy Drew series, being nothing if not self-aware, uses this trope exactly every 10 games. (It's occasionally justified by the fact that the villain wanted Nancy there as a part of their plans.) In game #10, she goes to a ranch that is haunted. In game #20, Bess is held for ransom at a Caribbean resort, forcing Nancy to search for a hidden treasure to free her. In game #30, the reality show she competes in is actually a front for Sonny Joon's plans.
  Nancy: You know how I always seem to end up in these really old houses with secret passageways?
  [beat]
  George: Sometimes I think they follow you around.
• On occasion in Criminal Case, the player character and their partner will be off and about and a murder will end up happening and need to be solved. Maple Heights, the wealthy district, is loaded with cases like these. In order: Attending a political speech, a fishing trip, a garden party, a golf trip, a wedding, and a night at the opera. Only four of the cases involve the player at their job.
• Shantae and the Seven Sirens starts off with Shantae and her friends going on a vacation for the first time to a tropical island after all their previous adventures, where a festival involving half-genies from around the world is held. Naturally, she doesn't get to enjoy herself for long, as the other half-genies suddenly vanish right before the festivities start, so she goes to track them down and find out who or what caused the incident, and runs into both the titular Seven Sirens and her Arch-Enemy Risky Boots attempting to Take Over the World.
• World of Horror:
  • Some of the mysteries begin with the protagonist leaving Shiokawa in order to do things like attend a festival in a far-off mountain village or attend a vigil for a recently deceased relative. No matter where they go, however, they tend to stumble across terrible things.
  • Notably averted when saving and quitting a session, which is represented by the protagonist leaving town for a while. Nothing happens to them until you return and pick up playing where you left off, heralding their return to Shiokawa after resting and recovering.
• Senran Kagura: Frequently, one or several of the girls will be doing personal business, shopping, going to the beach, or whatever, and enemy shinobi will attack, forcing the girls into battle.
  • In Burst, Chapter 3 has the Hanzo girls decide to go to the beach to relax after fighting off Hebijo. Then the Hebijo girls and their mooks attack.
  • Happens twice in Deep Crimson:
    • In Chapter 3, after defeating Dogen and Orochi, the girls decide to take a well-earned vacation and are hanging around, bonding with each other. Then a yoma invasion happens, forcing the girls into action to save Japan.
    • Chapter 4 is a more comedic variant, in which the girls relax at the local hot springs, only to get into fights with each other for silly reasons.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Manhattan Project, the Turtles are enjoying a vacation in Florida when Shredder initiates his latest plan by making Manhattan Island a floating island, forcing the Turtles to take action.
• Persona 5 Strikers takes place during the Phantom Thieves' summer vacation, with the first event in the story being Joker returning to Tokyo to see his friends again. Shortly after his arrival, it turns out the Metaverse is manifesting itself again, with a local celebrity taking advantage of it, leading to the Phantom Thieves coming out of retirement to put an end to stop her. After returning the stolen Desires, it's revealed that such incidents are cropping up around Japan, leading to the group hitting the road to investigate them, taking in as much of the cities as they can along the way.
• In Skylanders: SWAP Force, Flynn, an ally of the Skylanders who has assisted them in their previous adventures, is supposed to be on vacation at the Cloudbreak Islands to witness the eruption of the magical volcano there that only happens every one hundred years. But the series' Big Bad Kaos plans to use said volcano to spread darkness across Skylands. And so, Flynn and the Skylanders (via the former's connections with them) is asked by a fox girl named Tessa to help her village Woodburrow stop the evil plan. At the end of the game, Tessa apologizes to Flynn for making him miss his vacation, but he says that the adventure he got to experience instead was way better than just kicking back and relaxing.

Visual Novels

• Whenever the protagonists in the Ace Attorney series take an interest in anything, someone will die in connection to it. Many members of the Economy Cast actually pick up on this, but think it's them with the bad luck.
  • In the second game, Phoenix goes to meet Maya at Kurain Village and see her at her job as Kurain's resident channeler, only to step right into some extremely ugly family politics that involve framing Maya for murder so her resentful aunt can get her 8-year-old cousin Pearl to replace her. Then a magician at a circus they go to gets unjustly arrested (Phoenix's involvement is justified as Maya begging him to represent one of her favorite performers). And finally, when they get invited to an awards ceremony, the guy winning the award has one of his competitors assassinated and the assassin forces Phoenix to take his case.
  • The third game has a cultural event being interrupted by a theft that turns out to be part of a setup for a murder, and then Maya's training session gets interrupted by said evil aunt again trying to have her assassinated.
  • This continues in the Gaiden Game, Ace Attorney Investigations. The second case has Edgeworth on an airplane. When he goes to use the in-flight elevator, there's a body inside. Yep, it's a murder. And poor Edgeworth's the first suspect. At least he'd already taken the vacation beforehand.
  • It happens again in the sequel when Edgeworth goes to a speech that the president of Zheng Fa gives in his honor, and there ends up being an assassination attempt which was staged, as a way for the president to regain popularity and for the killer to murder his rival. That said, the case actually notes that the Chief Prosecutor asked for Edgeworth specifically to handle the investigation, so this one's a bit justified.
  • Phoenix travels to a foreign kingdom just to check up on Maya in Spirit of Justice when he winds up in their courtroom, defending a suspect of murder. At least in this case it's justified in that Phoenix is literally the only practicing defense attorney in the country (the rest were the victims of The Purge previously, and the only other trained attorney is a fugitive and Rebel Leader), and Kura'in's spirit-channeling based legal system is subject to misunderstandings from the fourteen-year-old princess who does Divination Seances. Phoenix takes his cases there because said seances wrongly implicated a young child and Maya of capital crimes.
• In Demonbane, the group takes a vacation after Hadou mansion was damaged in a previous battle. At first, it seems to be a Breather Episode and Beach Episode; they do encounter villains like Dr. West and mooks, but they are also on vacation and get beaten up in comical ways. Then something fishy occurs, befitting the episode name, The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Webcomics

• In Kevin & Kell, an otter's idea of a vacation is holding an office job.
• Li'l Gotham: Alfred forces Bruce to take a tropical vacation. He gets captured by pirates who are preying on the tourists. Fortunately, he always keeps a Batsuit close at hand even on vacation.
• After Gary Gygax visits the Lawful Good afterlife of The Order of the Stick, Roy and Roy's Archon decide to run a first-edition D&D campaign. It even gets lampshaded here.
• Dewey the librarian in Unshelved spends his day off reading.
• This Shortpacked! shows that Ethan apparently spends his days off straightening up the toy aisles of other stores.
• In Exterminatus Now, Eastwood, a member of a law enforcement agency with limited oversight and virtually unlimited authority, plays Mass Effect, in which the protagonist is recruited into a law enforcement agency and given limited oversight and virtually unlimited authority. When Virus demands to know how this is different from his day job, Eastwood says that when he punched a reporter in real life, her boyfriend threw him down a flight of stairs.
• In Freefall, Niomi has been busy "...fixing up the house and joining family vacations with the hubby and the kids." and is seeking to join the crew of the Savage Chicken to actively pursue one of these.

Web Original

• The SCP Foundation has acquired several of the items it has after they came to the attention of vacationing agents. For example, SCP-2864 was picked up from a thrift store by a Foundation staffer vacationing in Italy.
• Survival Tips for S.H.I.E.L.D. Recruits: This is the only type of holiday a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent can expect to have.
  • Tip #94: Should you actually utilize your vacation time, keep in mind that there is always a chance you could get recalled in case of emergency. Should that be the case, you will retain the balance. Of course, some senior agents have accrued years of backlogged vacation time.
  • Tip #478: While we do try to provide safe and unknown vacationing areas for our agents, there is only so much we can do. Make sure to pack heat with that sunscreen.
• The girls of Team Kimba can't go anywhere in the Whateley Universe without something happening, or someone attacking them. Over Christmas break, the six girls go to six different cities. Six fights with bad guys ensue.
• Youtuber The Mighty Jingles was in Her Majesty's Royal Navy for over 20 years, serving in several roles, most notably as a comms tech for a destroyer, meaning a lot of Royal Navy ship talk. What does he do to stay busy now that he's no longer in armed service? He spends a lot of his time playing World of Warships and commentating on videos of the same, with a particular fondness for the British tech tree... meaning a lot of Royal Navy ship talk. He's made a few jokes about never being able to really get away from the Royal Navy even though he's retired.
• Stellar Ranger Dark Star: In Series One, the epilogue chapter is a Beach Episode with the Rangers going to a Florida beach to relax after beating Baron Stellos. Unfortunately for them, the Puppetrix has prepared a trap for them and desires one last battle, forcing them to save the day once again.

Western Animation

• Many Scooby-Doo episodes. Very noticeable on What's New, Scooby-Doo?, because most episodes are about them going on vacation and encountering a monster.
  • There was also an episode of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo where the crew goes on a cruise to help a clearly unhinged Scooby to relax. The cruise ship turns out to be a Ghost Ship heading straight for The Bermuda Triangle. And not only do they have to deal with the ghost crew and passengers, but the Bermuda Triangle's power causes all the ghosts they had captured to be released (though luckily a Deus ex Machina sorted everything out).
  • Lampshade Hanging in one episode of What's New, Scooby-Doo?: Fred announces that they're going to visit his uncle's museum, in an abandoned castle next to a graveyard. Shaggy laments "Aw, man, we're not even waiting for the monsters to find us any more!" So instead they do what Scooby wants and go to a dog show. There's a monster anyway.
  • Chill Out, Scooby-Doo! has the gang trying to avoid mysteries on vacation — but they fail because Scooby-Doo and Shaggy end up on the wrong plane.
  • One of the newer movies has Fred come to the Entertainingly Wrong conclusion that mysteries happen to everyone everywhere everyday, because it would just be too much of a coincidence if they only happened to him and his friends. Shaggy doesn't believe it, but he also doesn't have a good counterargument.
• Kim Possible does a lot of traveling as part of her "charity work"; but, on top of that, any family vacation, cheerleading away game, or visit to her Nana's house inevitably runs headlong into something evil.
• The Real Ghostbusters:
  • In "Bustman's Holiday," Ray inherits an old Scottish castle and the title of Duke from his uncle, but the will has a condition: get rid of the ghost haunting the place. Ray gets to try ahead of closer by kinfolk, and Peter laments having another job instead of a much needed vacation. It turns out the ghost was a keystone; he was cursed to roam for eternity for wrongly starting a costly battle, but after he's trapped, the others are awakened to restart their fight and threaten nearby villagers. After the situation is resolved, Ray learns the supposed executor of the estate was really working for his uncle's kinfolk and didn't warn the team of the curse to ruin Ray's chances of getting the estate.
  • In "Dairy Farm," the Ghostbusters try to have a relaxing time at a farm. Of course it's haunted.
  • In "Camping It Up," the Ghostbusters try to have a relaxing time camping in a forest. No haunting, but only because the paranormal creature they have to deal with isn't ghostly.
• An episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has Team Lightyear take a vacation together. Of course, Plucky Comic Relief XR immediately gets involved with a mob of Bounty Hunters and everyone winds up in a gunfight.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: No matter where the Rangers travel, there is always at least one case waiting for them. And they travel a lot.
• The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan runs on this trope.
• In an episode of American Dad!, Roger goes on a date with a bartender... at the same bar she works at... and he has her serve the drinks. She is visibly annoyed by it.
• Martin Mystery: No matter what they do, Martin, Diana and Java always have to deal with something supernatural. They visit an aunt in the countryside? They're attacked by a possessed scarecrow. They buy a guitar, or a typewriter, or some random stuff on the Internet? It's magic and evil. They go on a corporate retreat? Time for an Evil Dead episode.
• Anytime the girls of Totally Spies! try to relax, a mission is not too far away. Although on at least one occasion, the whole "vacation" was a secret training session planned by Jerry to seem like this. And then, after this was revealed, there ended up being a REAL emergency...
• Played with on Batman: The Brave and the Bold — AQUAMAN is sight-seeing on the surface with his family, but is bored stiff and wants to go fight crime. He keeps slipping away whenever he sees news of another superhero in need of aid.
• In The Simpsons, Chief Wiggum goes to the beach in uniform because "crime doesn't take a vacation", then it cuts to Fat Tony and his henchmen tossing a beachball around.
• In American Dragon: Jake Long, Jake's Dad took him into a camping trip. There, he met a village of sprites needing help against The Jersey Devil. In another episode, a family reunion was interrupted by a bunch of magical sharks. In the Series Finale, the main characters' family vacation to Hong Kong is interrupted the Big Bad's attack on a once-in-a-thousand-years ceremony.
• This happens all the time with Inspector Gadget. The Chief has apologized more than once for having to interrupt his vacation, or his day off. Fortunately, Gadget is "always on duty", as he himself says.
• Popeye and Olive tried to take a vacation from their treasure-seeking business and ended up looking for the lost treasure of Marie-Antoinette. In the end of that episode, somebody asked them to look for an artifact that belonged to Joan of Arc. They refused.
• Goofy once took a vacation from his job as a dishwasher and used a credit card to pay for expenses. Once he ran out of credit, he had to wash dishes to pay for his bill.
• Sofia the First:
  • In "Baileywick's Day Off", King Roland insists that Baileywick take a holiday for his birthday because he never does and he deserves one. But instead of actually taking that holiday, Baileywick ends up taking care of the increasingly trivial requests of the children. When Sofia comes to realize how selfish this was, however, they end up throwing him a Surprise Party, a "Day Off Do-Over Party," complete with all of the fun activities he had missed out on that day because he was helping all the kids.
  • Invoked in Elena and the Secret of Avalor. Sofia's family is looking for a new place to visit for summer vacation, with King Roland also wanting this new place to be a good trade partner to negotiate with. At the same time, Sofia learns about Princess Elena and the situation in Avalor, so she persuades her family to go there for summer vacation, with added plus of Avalor being an excellent trade partner. While Sofia's family is busy being treated by Shuriki, Sofia is off trying to figure out how to bring Elena back. In the climax of the special, Sofia's family get arrested after Sofia is revealed to have helped Elena come back and Elena exposes Shuriki to them, but Sofia and Elena rescue them and they join in the rebellion at the end of the special. Presumably, they got to vacation in Avalor for real afterwards.
• In Elena of Avalor special "Song of the Sirenas", which took place after an arc of Shuriki returning, Elena and co. are visiting the royal family's summer home for vacation when Princess Marisa of the local sirenas approaches Elena, asking her to help officially declare a peace treaty between the humans and the sirenas, as the sirenas used to menace sailors, but have since stopped, unaware to the humans. This is also interrupted by Shuriki and co., who show up in an attempt to kill Elena. After Shuriki is defeated, the matter regarding the sirenas is continued in the following episode, "The Tides of Change", in which the peace treaty is formally signed. This trope is lampshaded at the beginning of the episode by the normally workaholic Esteban, who complains about Elena interrupting his "pre-siesta siesta" for work.
• In the Static Shock episode "Static in Africa", Virgil and his family take a tour of Ghana. He ends up helping the local superhero Anansi foil a plot to destroy a dam.
• Lampshaded by Mandrake in the Defenders of the Earth episode "Kshin and the Ghost Ship". The Defenders are holidaying in Jamaica when they learn that Ming's troops are in the area.
  It's rather like Ming to spoil our holiday.
• The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show has Mr. Peabody explicitly try to have a time travel vacation, only to be surprised when the usual time traveling hijinks ensue forcing him into his usual work.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) has an entire side-season dedicated to this: In the fourth season premiere, after defeating Shredder yet again, the Turtles win a contest that grants them a trip throughout Europe. This leads to a 13 episode mini-season with the Turtles and Splinter touring the country, with the gang happy to go on vacation and take some time off from fighting their arch-enemy. Naturally, even the least genre savvy viewer can guess who happens to be showing up in nearly every location the Turtles visit. And the few times Shredder isn't involved, some other one-shot villain is the one causing havoc instead.
• The Justice League Unlimited episode "Hawk and Dove" opens with Wonder Woman stopping a bank robbery in her civilian clothes, ticked at having her day off interrupted.
• One episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has Rainbow Dash looking forward to a vacation from the Wonderbolts. She arrives back in Ponyville and is excited to learn that she's being summoned for a friendship assignment... until she learns that the assignment is back at Wonderbolt Academy. She's officially doing friendship duties, not Wonderbolt duties, but she still doesn't appreciate the timing.
• The Daffy Duck cartoon "Boston Quackie" lampshades it at the start. Quackie (Daffy) and secretary Mary are on vacation in Paris when Quackie's superior Inspector Faraway (Porky Pig) arrives with an assignment.
  Quackie: (sarcastically) Well, thanks for the busman's holiday, Inspector!
• The Dick Tracy Show: "Tacos Tangle" had Joe Jitsu on his way to Mexico for vacation when Tracy radios to him that B.B. Eyes is there already, having skipped parole. Joe consigns himself with mixing business with pleasure, meeting fellow officer Go-Go Gomez.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In one episode, Mr. Krabs goes on a cruise vacation with SpongeBob and laments the lack of tasty food (the food being served is surface food, such as corn-on-the-cob, which he complains is too dry). SpongeBob ends up making Krabby Patties and they manage to make a load of money selling them to customers.
  • In "Bummer Vacation", Mr. Krabs is forced to send SpongeBob on vacation or else he'll receive a fine. SpongeBob, who enjoys his job, has trouble finding a way to have fun on his vacation and continuously returns to the Krusty Krab to try and get back to doing his job, even more so when he learns that Patrick has been hired as his temporary replacement. Ultimately subverted, as Patrick was doing a pretty good job of handling the job and SpongeBob manages to get back to work right when Mr. Krabs is allowed to bring him back.
• In a second-season episode of Young Justice (2010), the female team members are having a bridal shower for Rocket when Captain Cold tries to rob a bank right across the street. After his ice is suddenly shattered he looks up to see just how many superheroes are arrayed against him.
  Captain Cold: I'm completely doomed, aren't I?
• In BattleTech (1994), supporting character and comic relief rogue Val Ryder is found by Adam and his crew playing simulated Humongous Mecha Battlemech hologram duels in dive bars, sometimes for money. Val is a proper 'Mechwarrior himself and so could be doing the same thing at full scale for pay as a mercenary, but he correctly points out that the consequences of losing in a video game are much less dire, especially for someone as aggressive in combat as he is. This serves as Foreshadowing because he ends up losing his family's ancestral Centurion Battlemech because of his risk-taking, red-line piloting style.

Real Life

• The modern Trope Namer comes from the Literal Metaphor incident of New York City bus driver William Cimillo deciding to take a spontaneous detour from his usual route and drive his bus to Florida, which made him something of a Folk Hero to many, but a villain to commuters and his family.
• The Wieliczka Salt Mine. What does a salt miner do on his day off? He mines salt! Polish salt miners apparently spent their time off carving some pretty impressive artwork and even an entire church out of the salt itself.
• "When told that work is work and spare time is not for engineering, I am concerned that the candidate's world view is not really that of a successful engineer."
• After finishing the principal photography on The Avengers, Joss Whedon had about two weeks or so to rest before overseeing post-production. So what did he do? He invited a few friends over to his house for twelve days... and made a movie (specifically, a low-budget production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing).
• Fred Dibnah, the famous British steeplejack, was divorced by one of his wives after one too many holidays spent fixing chimneys.
• Many Abridged Series creators, such as LittleKuriboh and MasakoX, make at least some of their living doing freelance video editing or voice-over work for professional productions. This is a bit of an inversion: rather than doing their job while on vacation, they've figured out a way to get paid for their hobby.
• Gordon's Great Escape series was created when Gordon Ramsay decided, during a rather tumultuous time in his life, to literally escape to India to learn about cooking as a vacation. He even calls it out word for word when he works on a train instead of paying for the ticket, in the kitchen no less.
• A Beach Episode variety happened when Mikaela Kellner tackled a thief while off-duty sunbathing in a bikini.
• Henry Kissinger was a political scientist and diplomat who while serving as the US Secretary of State had to negotiate countless political deals, often in quite tense circumstances. His favourite board game was Diplomacy.
• It's becoming more and more common, when applying for a computer programming job, for the interviewer to ask about an applicant's GitHub contributions. While there's certainly nothing wrong with coders writing code on their free time, assuming or even expecting that they do so comes loaded with unfortunate implications.
• Many engineering and computer careers spend excessive amounts of time on the computer. After work, one of the most popular side activities is video gaming or spending other time online.
• It is absolutely common for tradesmen to work in their free time, either doing off-the-books work for someone or working on their own homes and projects.
• Nina Persson, lead singer of The Cardigans, frequents karaoke bars in her free time.
• Many theatre actors (especially musical theatre) go see shows in their spare time. This is because they may have gotten into the industry via being ascended fans, they have friends in the shows they want to support, or they want to observe other actors as part of improving their craft.
• This happens frequently enough for medical professionals that Is There a Doctor in the House? is still a relevant trope, like the Bikini Doctor saving a surfer at the beach and Doctor Mike saving a fellow passenger on a trans-Atlantic flight.
• In August of 2023, ABC News correspondent and Good Morning America weekend host Gio Benitez took a week off from the show for a vacation to Maui in Hawaii, the exact same week horrific wildfires ravaged the island. Benitez ended up covering the wildfires for ABC News while in his vacation clothes.
• The same fires saw vacationing United Airlines pilot Vince Eckelcamp volunteering to evacuate people by air from the island.

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