Ceiling Cling

Ceiling River is watching you.

"Love it when they don't look up."

— Kim Possible, Kim Possible

A character avoids pursuit or detection by hanging from the ceiling of the room or hallway. Thankfully, the upper reaches of the room have structures (walls, pipes, crossbeams, etc.) that are close enough for the hero to grab onto, even if they have to hold themselves up through sheer friction.

Luckily, nobody ever thinks to look up. The only sop to plausibility is our heredity: as walking animals we naturally focus on a horizon ring, and at our size lack in flying predators (thankfully).

This is frequently used to achieve a Fakeout Escape, e.g. when performed in a locked room or an Empty Elevator. Sometimes, the seeker is alerted to the hider's presence above by blood or sweat dripping to the floor. If a monster is involved it may lead to Vertical Kidnapping.

See also: Ceiling Corpse, Container Cling, Acrophobic Bird, 1-Dimensional Thinking, Object Ceiling Cling, He Was Right There All Along.

Not to be confused with a Wall Crawl, which can also involve crawling across the ceiling.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Used in this very strange ad for Emerald Nuts. Robert Goulet messing up your stuff is nothing to laugh at. Though, it's probably less of a problem now when there is death involved. No. No, it isn't.
• One commercial had a little kid doing this while playing hide-and-seek with his dad.

Anime & Manga

• In Akazukin Chacha, it's revealed that the pink ninja Orin was there all along in class even though never shown in the first season — having been clinging to the ceiling the whole time.
• Claire Stanfield of Baccano! does this from time to time. Of course, he doesn't do it to hide so much as he enjoys delivering surprise death from above, so the victim looking up usually isn't an issue.
• Bleach: Shinji is capable of this. He's shown in one chapter's cover art as pulling a straight example of this against Ichigo. However, in the actual manga, he can pull this stunt on people using only thin air. It's a hint of his special power (being able to reverse things).
• Lupin III does this to both dodge Zenigata and avoid a Trap Door in The Castle of Cagliostro.
• Rider of Fate/stay night majors in adhesive acrobatics, with a minor in flight. She prefers to attack from impossible angles, since her actual combat ability leaves much to be desired. Her ceiling cling allows her to stab down into the base of Shirou's neck, from above and behind.
• Sōsuke in Full Metal Panic! almost gets away with this. It would have worked if the robots did not have the smarts to: TURN AROUND! Dun dun dun. It isn't his fault: he hoisted himself up between some ceiling pipes and engaged his ECS, waited until his pursuers passed underneath then dropped down, disengaged ECS and started going in the opposite direction but not before reporting it to his superiors via radio. Unknown to him, the enemy was tapping their communications which means he just gave away his position.
• All Shinobi in Naruto who have the mastered the necessary chakra control can do this. As the necessary level of chakra control is considered a rather basic ninja skill, such displays are at least as likely to be played for comedy as they are for ambush or evasion. After all, when everybody can do it, nobody will be surprised by it.
• Silver managed to do this at the start of the G/S/C arc of Pokémon Adventures, using a pair of flourescent lights as supports.
• Pokémon: The Original Series: One of the missing Kecleon does this in the episode "The Kecleon Caper".
• Ranma ½:
  • Ranma frequently tries to escape distressing situations this way, to spy on people, and while sneak attacking — and he can cling to even a smooth, painted wooden surface◊. Once he even did a blanket cling when trying to hide from his mother as she pulled off the covers from his futon.
  • At least one antagonist, Kodachi, uses this to get the drop on Akane once.
  • The Iemoto of the Daimonji family can sit in the seiza position on the ceiling, and even move, clinging solely with her toes.
• Yu Gi Oh ARCV: Shun Kurosaki used this while in the City's jail to trick a guard and then assault him in order to escape.

Comic Books

• Batgirl: Year One: As foiling a robbery in a convenience store, Batgirl evades an armed goon by quickly rushing into an aisle, climbing up the shelves and clinging to the ceiling.
• The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: Lampshaded in the Fat Freddy's Cat comic Animal Camp.
  "My last hope, the 'ceiling cling'."
• Tim Drake was shown hiding on the ceiling of the GCPD evidence room on a cover of Robin (1993) after being framed for murder. He did sneak around in there but when spotted he used smoke to confuse things and walked out dressed as a police officer.
• Spider-Man: Spider-Man doesn't even need to grab onto anything but the ceiling itself to hold himself up. This was parodied when someone did look up (thankfully he was a civilian, not a villain) and Spidey was forced to sign an autograph to keep him quiet.
  Spider-Man: You know you're not supposed to look up until a second after I'm gone, right?
• The "escaping from the jail cell" version appears in the Super Mario Adventures comic book. Princess Toadstool fools the Koopalings into coming into her cell in this way, then beats them up and locks them in.
• The Dark Phoenix Saga: Wolverine clings to the underbasement's ceiling when facing the Hellfire Club.
• Wonder Woman (1987): Solomon knocks out the second Ogawa Electronics guard by holding onto the pipes on the ceiling and swinging down to kick him as he opens the door.

Comic Strips

• Dragon magazine #4, Fineous Fingers comic strip. While Fineous and his friends are exploring a dungeon, a monster attacks them and swallows both of Fineous' friends. Fineous escapes by quickly climbing a wall and holding onto the ceiling. He does this so quickly that the monster loses sight of him and can't find him. Unfortunately the part of the ceiling he's holding onto breaks off, dropping him to the floor right in front of the monster.

Fan Works

• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: Hobbes does this out of fright in a Halloween Episode.
• In episode 20 of the first arc of Supergirl fanfic Hellsister Trilogy, Kara sticks to the ceiling so John Constantine doesn't realize he was being overheard.
  Kara floated up to the ceiling and spread-eagled herself against it as John opened the door. He looked both ways, then walked in the direction of the guest quarters.
• Super Therapy!: Spider-Man clings to the ceiling after a Jump Scare from the doctor raising her voice.
• Rise of the Minisukas: Nerv's bodyguards also resort to ceiling-clinging as watching over the Eva Pilots, but they are not inconspicuous enough to not be noticed by Shinji's geeky friend Kensuke.

Films — Animation

• Hoodwinked!, complete with a sweat drop.
• Helen from The Incredibles does this on multiple occassions. And she doesn't need the ceiling to be conveniently conformed to fit her body so she can hold on — she does that part herself.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: When Miles' roommate Ganke comes home, all six Spider-People jump up and hide in the corner of the ceiling (Peni gets squished between Gwen and Miles, since she doesn't actually have sticky powers). As Ganke turns around, the Spider-People keep moving around on the ceiling to stay out of his sight until they make a mistake and he sees them.
• Done twice in the Toy Story series.
  • Toy Story. Woody clings to the underside of a box to avoid being found by Sid.
  • Toy Story 2. Buzz hangs onto the underside of an elevator to reach the floor where Al's apartment is.
• Up: The George and A.J. short reveals that this was how Russell got on the house when it took off. He was clinging from the bottom of the house.

Films — Live-Action

• Batman does this in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice to hide from the police who've caught him beating up a sex slave trafficker. When one cop spots him, he crawls along the roof and out of the room in a surprisingly creepy rapid-fire scene.
• Similarly, the witches in the film The Beastmaster slip past and surround the title hero this way.
• In the Movie adaption of The Cat in the Hat, Cat avoids being found out by the kids' neighbor by flattening himself onto the ceiling.
• Alex Munday in Charlie's Angels (2000) clings to the ceiling of her van to protect herself from getting shot by Vivian's thugs.
• The final shootout of Commando sees John Matrix being trapped in a shed filled with tools. Several enemy soldiers began pumping the shed full of lead with their guns, and then they enter, expecting John to be dead, only for John to drop from the shed's ceiling, and then expertly take down the soldiers using various tools in the shed.
• Cthulhu: "There were 'things', and they were everywhere! They were on the ground, they were on the ceiling, they were everywhere!"
• In Desperate Journey, The Squad clings to the undercarriage of a bridge in order to surprise some Nazi sentries. It works, because the Germans are distracted by their comrade, who is at the bottom of the ravine groaning from the Tap on the Head administered by the good guys.
• In Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Dracula uses this to escape detection. A slamming door causes him to come loose.
• One of the creepiest moments of the underrated The Exorcist III is when a possessed old woman skitters by the protagonist... on the ceiling.
• Tom Cruise hides from Wilford Brimley this way in the movie of The Firm.
• Galaxy Quest: Quellek clings to the ceiling in his true form (likely thanks to his tentacles) in combination with the Mak'tar stealth haze to hide from the Mooks.
• Goldfinger does this quite well, with James Bond tricking the guard into thinking he's escaped, clinging on to the ceiling, and then dropping down behind him once the guard opens the door.
• Used by the burglars in Home Alone 3 film.
• In Jack and Jill, Jill's Craigslist date "Funbucket" clings to the bathroom ceiling when she comes looking for him in order to ditch her on their date.

• A variation in Kate. A couple of Yakuza mooks enter a dark alley, only to be shot dead. A Reveal Shot then shows that Kate is propped like chimney climber against the narrow walls above their heads.
• The Bride does this to hide from Go-Go Yubari◊ in Kill Bill Volume 1.
• The Man Who Came Back: In his first escape attempt, Paxton deliberately gets himself confined to 'the Hole', then digs a shallow hole in the dirt floor to make it look like he has tunneled his way out. He then clings to the roof of the cell. When the guard checks on him and sees the hole, he runs off to raise the alarm and Paxton slips out the door he left open.
• Matilda: Trunchbull is trying to catch the people who are in her house (Matilda and Miss Honey). At one point, Matilda hides under a table with long curtains, but at one point Trunchbull tries to peek inside, so the little girl clings to the underside of the table to avoid being seen.
• Men in Black II: Done when Jay, Kay, and the worms clinging to the ceiling of an Empty Elevator attempting to break into their headquarters that's under control by the Big Bad and to dodge from a gunner droid.
• In Momentum hi-tech thief Alex uses this technique to evade her assassin pursuers after first opening a window to make them think she went that way. Comes with a *Drool* Hello moment when a drop of blood narrowly misses the man below.
• In Panic in the Streets, Blackie hides in the beams on the underside of the pier, and uses it to deliver a Tap on the Head to Reed when Reed comes searching for him.

• Parodied in Rush Hour 2, where Lee tries to sneak into a casino's back rooms. He climbs on top of a large safe being wheeled in, and clings to the ceiling once he's inside, letting it move past... then sees he's staring right into a security camera.
• Serenity (2005): River Tam was an expert at doing this when necessary. Also doubles as The Cast Showoff moment, as Summer Glau really was capable of doing this. The only reason the beam on her right foot exists is because she was slightly too short for the width of the corridor, so the beams were used to narrow the distance.
• In Shanghai Knights, Chon's sister attempts to escape from jail this way.
• Shenandoah: Several escaped Confederate POWs successfully hide from a Union patrol in the rafters of a covered bridge.
• In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Simza's assassin hides himself in this way. Works because he is described by Holmes as a Cossack, renowned for their acrobatic talents.
• The Ceiling Cling scene in the Spider-Man movie. Peter Parker is in his own apartment with his mask off but otherwise in costume when friends and family come in and he has to hide to keep his Secret Identity. He clings to the ceiling as they are right under him, including Norman Osborn, his (unbeknownst to him at the time) Big Bad Friend. Just after they leave the room, a single drop of blood falls off a cut on his arm from the battle earlier. Norman hears the drop land. In the time it takes him to turn around, look down and look up, Peter has made it out the window. Norman looks out the window, but Peter is now clinging to the ledge under the window.
• Burt Reynolds in a Miami public restroom in Elmore Leonard's Stick.
• Lampshaded in Superhero Movie, where The Dragonfly is almost discovered while he's going to the bathroom. Hourglass' search for him launches into a minute-long search where Dragonfly hides everywhere from in a closet, to a drawer, to behind Hourglass, all at improbable speeds. He finally clings to the ceiling, but, unable to hold his pee, he begins dripping, then streaming, then gushing, then spurting like a sprinkler.
• One of the turtles in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) clings to the ceiling, after hiding in the shower, to avoid being seen by April's boss when he throws open the curtain looking for a towel.
• In Three Ninjas: Kick Back after being captured by the Big Bad and locked in a room, Rocky and Colt do this as part of a Fakeout Escape before dropping down, attacking the guard, and stealing his keys to lock him in.
• Tiger Cage 2 features a sequence in a dark storm drain, in which one of the protagonists hides from pursuing mooks by doing this. Unfortunately for him, his necktie is hanging down directly into the path of the cigarette lighter that one bad guy is using as a light source; his tie catches fire and he is discovered.
• In Tiger House, Kelly does this to hide at the top of the shower when Callum enters the bathroom to wash the blood off after he murders Lynn's lover.
• In Transformers (2007), one of the giant robots escapes pursuit this way, clinging to the underside of a bridge.
• Trick 'r Treat's Sam is seen doing this in a Meaningful Background Event.
• In TRON: Legacy, Sam does this to get the drop on two guards on top of a lift.
• In Wild Thing, the titular character does this after he's captured and locked up in the police station. When a photographer comes in to take his picture, Wild Thing drops down and knocks him out.
• Xander does this in xXx, but it is sabotaged by the fact he's doing so on a rock ceiling. He jumps on top of the baddies when he accidentally catches their attention by knocking off some dirt.

Literature

• In Roger McBride Allen's Caliban, the eponymous robot gets past his pursuers in an underground tunnel by doing this.
• The villain in Peter F. Hamilton's sci-fi novel The Nanoflower is able to cling to the roof of a cave (in order to ambush a pursuer) thanks to his Power Armor.
• While hiding from a house-to-house search in Communist Warsaw, British spy Quiller is able to do this trope in a cleaning cupboard, by wedging himself in the tiny space and resting the remainder of his weight on a broom handle propped into the corner.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Rhaegal does this while living in the dragonpit in Meereen, much to Quentyn Martell's surprise.
• Windrunner Radiants in The Stormlight Archive can pull this off with their Gravity Master powers. More frequently, they glue an enemy to the ceiling to put them out of the fight for a minute.
• In The Wizard of Lovecraft's Cafe, an alcoholic wizard devised a spell to allow him to catch a nap on the ceiling of his favorite pub. When he and a companion are threatened by thugs, they elude them using this spell; peoples' habit not to look up is Lampshaded.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: When Daisy is in a cargo elevator and sees a guard coming, she jumps up to hide in the recessed ceiling. It seems to be going pretty well, until a second guard comes and takes forever loading his stuff. Daisy starts slipping, and both guards hear her, so she has to just drop down and beat them up.
  Daisy: I really thought that would work.
• Sidney Bristow in an early episode of Alias. Unfortunately, she's holding herself up by the hot water pipes just as the Mook walks under her, so she has to very quietly move over to the other, cooler pipe. Being her, she pulls it off.
• Angel: Spoofed when a vampire tries to ambush Angel this way — he calmly steps to one side and the vampire crashes to the floor.
• Oliver Queen/The Hood (Green Arrow) does this once in Arrow to hide from police when he broke into a police station.
• In the "Flight of the War Witch" two part episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Buck, Princess Ardala and a Pendaran captive use this to get out of their cell. Well, Buck and the third prisoner do, Princess Ardala simply hides under the bed.
• Slightly unorthodox: used by a villain in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Potential".
• Doctor Who:
  • As most unnervingly demonstrated in "Day of the Moon", the Silence love to roost on the ceiling.◊ In packs.
  • "Can You Hear Me?": The last of the monsters that attacked the hospital in Aleppo is doing this when the Doctor first sees it.
• Heroes:
  • Monica pulls this once. If only she'd held on to her comic books...
  • Also, when Peter shows up at Mohinder's apartment for the first time, there's a sort of twist on this trope, as Mohinder is telekinetically pinned to the ceiling by Sylar, though Mohinder winds up dripping some blood on Peter, cluing him in.
• Richmond does this to avoid Jen in The IT Crowd.

• Naomi hides from Kate in the Lost episode "The Beginning of the End" by climbing a tree and hanging from a limb. Kate notices blood dripping on her from above.
• MacGyver: Piedra does this in "The Assassin". After escaping from his cell in the safehouse, he avoids one guard by clinging to the ceiling before dropping down behind the guard and killing him.
• In the Miami Vice episode "Bushido", Castillo does this to hide from KGB agents.
• An alien soldier in the guise of a preteen girl tries this in an episode of The Middleman. Unfortunately for her, nobody is smarter than the Middleman.
• Michael does this in the Thanksgiving episode of Now and Again, "Pulp Turkey". A couple of thieves have barged into the Wiseman home and taken everyone hostage, and the Ceiling Cling signals the start of his move to pick them off individually.
• Subverted in an episode of Sliders, where the title group slides into a world still stuck in the Old West mode. Quinn and Rembrandt are framed for murder and jailed by the local crime boss and a corrupt sheriff, to be hanged the next day. They realize they could use their knowledge of westerns to trick the guards and escape. Quinn does a ceiling cling while Rembrandt calls for help. Unfortunately for them, the person who walks in is the above-mentioned crime boss, who is also a dimensional traveler (and a Kromagg). He simply walks up to the cell doors without opening them and immediately looks up at Quinn, mentioning that Kromaggs have their own westerns.
• Stargate Atlantis: Major Sheppard uses a ceiling cling (helped by a smoke grenade) to get the drop on three Genii Mooks in Season 1 episode "The Eye". The life-signs detector monitored by one of their officers is of no help, since it cannot tell the exact height of a blip — just that Sheppard is right in the midst of them.
• In the Supernatural episode "Weekend at Bobby's", an ōkami demon uses this move to sneak-attack Bobby.
• Henry from Unnatural History does this in "The Fountain of Truth".
• Yancy Derringer: In "Return to New Orleans", Yancy and Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah leave a hotel room ahead of some gamblers who are angry about losing to Yancy. One of them fires several shots through the door, but when they charge out the corridor is empty. The gambler head of in search of Yancy and the camera pulls back to reveal Yahoo and Pahoo-Ka-Ta-Wah perched in an alcove above the door.

Video Games

• Catwoman does this in Batman: Arkham City in her last mission.
• Spider Splicers from BioShock do this with a distinct clinking sound.
• In Chack'n Pop, this is a basic move for Chack'n.
• The "Going Rogue" Expansion Pack for City of Heroes added the Ghouls as a villain group. They like to cling to the ceilings of the subway tunnels and drop down on you as you pass under them.
• Doom³: Demons do this very occasionally. Generally they just jump out of cupboards and from behind false walls.
• Hybrid Heaven occasionally has some monsters hiding above the player, choosing to drop down when you get close enough to their location. You can go into first-person mode and look up to see where they're hiding if you don't feel up to fighting them.
• The cultists from Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy start to do this after finishing the first roster of missions, waiting for Jaden to arrive inside the chamber they are in. This does not always work to their advantage, as they are exposed to Force push and grab, which might be lethal if there is a nearby chasm.
• Jurassic Park (Sega CD): In the Sega Master System version, Dr. Alan Grant can somehow grab ceilings and move around.
• Knuckles Chaotix: Espio is the only character that can do this. Fittingly, the series later turned him into a Ninja.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: The Wallmaster enemy drops from above and attempts to grab Link. If you look up as it's falling, though, it disappears...
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The boss room of the Great Bay Temple seems to be empty — Until you decide to look up. Oh hi Wart.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom:
    • The apelike Horriblins hang from the ceilings of caves, usually only dropping down to the ground when close enough to Link to attack.
    • In the second phase of its battle, Marbled Gohma climbs up to the ceiling of its boss arena, forcing you to do some extra work to aim Yunobo at its foot.
• In Mega Man X6. One of Blizzard Wolfang's attack is to clinging on the ceiling while creating an icicles, Zero can do ceiling cling with his Hyoroga, and X has Shadow Armor, which allow him to cling on the ceiling.
• Metroid Dread: Samus can use the Spider Magnet to latch onto and press her whole body up against a ceiling in combination with the Phantom Cloak to avoid an E.M.M.I.
• Pokémon:
  • If you thought Pokémon couldn't get away with this, say hello to the deliciously-trained peons of Pokémon Colosseum and XD's Cipher syndicate. Many times a path looks clear, but a Peon will drop from the ceiling and engage you with no warning otherwise. There's one Peon in XD that actually drops from an elevator ceiling when the player uses the elevator and player doesn't notice til they actually left it.
  • Happens again in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2, both during the story and in gameplay. In the story, Chatot and the player are attacked by a group of particularly nasty bandits that drop from the ceiling. Chatot recognizes this just in time and shields the player from attack, taking the brunt of the blow. In gameplay, there are the Monster Houses, which can be deadly.
• In the commentary of Portal, the developers talk about how hard it is to get players to look up. While this is effective when hiding baddies in the ceiling, it's not quite as effective when trying to solves puzzles in twisted three dimensions. Of course Half-Life veterans learned to always look up.
• Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Muckgals hide in blobs on the ceiling and extend themselves out to attack when Shantae's near.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Characters can do occasional ceiling running, though they can only get into it if the floor curves up at walls or down and over at ledges. Sometimes, the inversion is temporary; sometimes, the inversion is for as long as the ceiling is flat and the character is running forward (whichever direction counted as "forward" when he started running).
  • An exception is when the physics fail in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and our protagonist manages to come to a perfect stop at the top of a loop, making him stand upside down on the ceiling.
• One of the best ways to avoid (or lose) guards in Splinter Cell games is holding onto a pipe overhead with all four limbs. Your superspy can also do a "split jump" in narrow halls, stretching your legs to opposite walls and balancing yourself thus. By extension, you can also hang upside-down from a pipe to strangle opponents, shoot them with your pistol, or with your assault rifle in a split-jump.
• Super Mario World has the Spinies and Buzzy Beetles who are able to walk across the ceiling — they attempt to attack by dropping from above. One or two of the Bosses can do it too. It's not as common in 3D Mario games, presumably due to the already-stated fact that most people don't look up.
• In Team Fortress 2's fan-made Prop Hunt mode, one team is disguised as various objects in the level and can Double Jump to get around. The other team are all set to pyros and have to seek out the fake objects. A popular strategy is to hide atop something like a shelf in a room or right in plain sight, simply because players tend not to look directly up for enemies. Not having to look up very often for enemies in the main game mode probably helps to make this behaviour more common.
  • Players sometimes do this in regular game modes as well: many maps have small ledges, beams, signs, light fixtures, or other objects that players can stand on, but it isn't obvious that they can do so. Classes with the ability to Double Jump or Rocket Jump like to hide in these spots to ambush enemies (Scouts, Soldiers, and Demomen most commonly, but it's also possible for a Pyro, Engineer, or Medic with the right weapons). However, experienced players will quickly catch on if their opponents are using this strategy.
• Wing Commander Prophecy: The boss alien of the invading Nephilim uses this to ambush Commodore Blair, when the latter has boarded the alien wormhole gate to try to shut it down before humans get swarmed over by the Nephilim.

Web Animation

• Dreamscape: Being a vampire, of course Vampire Lord can do this. He uses this ability to spy on Seleenara and Boru in episode 7.

Webcomics

• In Bad Machinery, Kid Ryan did this to sneakily smoke cigarettes at school.
• Exterminatus Now shows us an infiltrator in the gang's quarters crawling along the ceiling. Unfortunately for him, he runs into Blasphemy.
• Girl Genius: Violetta the Smoke Knight holds herself up at the ceiling using the walls at the smaller entryway to the room when watching/confronting Lady Steelgarter as the latter woman covertly rummages through the protagonists' possessions.
• Done by Kroenen a lot in Abe & Kroenen (Abe's room has a convenient support beam). He's almost caught because of his unsecured hat.
• Done by Captain Tagon (with help from his attire) here, in Schlock Mercenary, where he hides on the ceiling to ambush the Parkata urbatsu team at their gathering spot.
  Narrator: Gripponan smart soles definitely qualify as force multipliers. With the right skills, they allow for amazing feats. And with the right intel, amazing feats become legendary ambushes.
• In Second Empire, Grexzol uses this via his casing's antigravity projectors to utterly massacre a group of enemy Daleks.
• Attempted and failed in Shortpacked!, thanks to Leslie being Genre Savvy. "When you watch as much sci-fi as I do, you learn to look up in an empty room fairly immediately."

Western Animation

• Arcane: Vander's kids and Ekko hide from the Enforcer looking for them by clinging to the pipes on the ceiling of their basement hangout. Powder barely holds on, falling just as he leaves.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Blue Spirit clings to the ceiling with two swords and a huge length of chain without making a sound or a move.
• Bobby Bumps: In "Bobby Bumps and His Pointer Pup" (1916), Bobby needs to get at his piggy bank in order to buy a puppy. The piggy bank, however, is on a shelf above the cot where his father is sleeping. Bobby takes a leap, jumps on to his father's big gut, and flies up to the shelf, where he hangs on for dear life while his startled father below looks left and right for the culprit but never looks up.
• In Dragons: Riders of Berk, Heather does this in her cell to knock her guardian Bucket out and escape.
• In an episode of Family Guy, Quagmire does this in a women's restroom stall to spy on Lois Griffin.
• In the Gravity Falls episode "Boyz Crazy", Mabel, her friends Candy and Grenda (who's overweight) and the boy band Sev'ral Timez all cling to the ceiling in order not to be seen by Grunkle Stan.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: A variant in "28 Pranks Later"; Rainbow Dash doesn't cling to a ceiling, but to the other side of Cheerilee's rotating blackboard, to prank her. Rainbow Dash is holding to the frame of the blackboard with both wings and all four hooves, in a pegasus version of the position that is usually envisioned for the trope.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: At one point in “Helping Hands”, the Keymaster 3000 hides from Ella and Buddy in a narrow hallway by bracing itself between the walls just below the ceiling.
• Samurai Jack does this in an episode when infiltrating a tower in order to rescue a fairy from a gargoyle.
• Poked fun at by The Simpsons. Mr. Burns and Smithers attempt a Ceiling Cling in Homer's kitchen while trying to steal Maggie's teddy bear. Unfortunately Homer comes in at that very moment, and starts a marathon cheese-eating session that lasts until dawn. (That's when Smithers and Mr. Burns just give up and fall to the floor.)
  Burns: [dusting himself off] Good day to you.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Dooku Captured", Anakin is hiding on the ceiling above the door to the cell Obi-Wan finds him in when he comes to rescue his old apprentice.
• Star Wars Rebels:
  • In "Always Two There Are", Zeb ambushes the two Inquisitors by mag-clamping the Phantom upside-down on the ceiling of the hanger bay. Ezra and Sabine are tipped off that he's there by a transmission from Zeb that told them to "keep your chin up".
  • In "Through Imperial Eyes", Ezra does this, with his hands cuffed behind his back, in his cell on the Chimaera to ambush anyone who comes inside. He doesn't get the chance, as his first visitor is the The Mole.
• Subverted in Stroker and Hoop. Hoop was infiltrating a guy's office, when he suddenly hears him coming. He hides up between the rafters on the ceiling. The guy comes in, calmly sits down, picks up his telephone, and says, "Hello, Security? There's a guy up on my ceiling. I don't know why he thinks I can't see him." (Amusingly, when the guy comes in, Hoop almost drops his keys and catches them in a dramatic way, thinking he's safe).
• This list won't be completed without mentioning Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003). In the very first episode, Leo does this and does this good. And thru many episodes Turtles cling to the ceiling a lot. Well, its justified that all of them are ninjas...
• Total Drama: During a game of hide-and-seek/tag with Chef Hatchet being "it" (while wielding a water gun), Izzy decides to employ this trope in the mess hall...then she sneezes. Badassery Ensures.
• Totally Spies!, episode "Morphing Is Sooo 1987": Sam does this in a rectangular sunroof◊ to hide from the shapeshifting android trying to kill her, but the neat freak in her comes out when she sees a dirt spot.
• Done in The Transformers episode "The Golden Lagoon". The Autobots cling to a prison cell ceiling, dropping down on the Decepticons who enter the cell.
• In the Victor and Valentino and Villainous crossover, 5.0.5 is doing this to escape from Black Hat.

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Admit it; you looked up while reading this didn't you?

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